SIN MAÍZ, NO HAY PAÍS: CORN IN MEXICO UNDER NEOLIBERALISM, 1940-2008
Matthew Caire
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green
State University in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
May 2010
Committee:
Amílcar Challú, Advisor
Candace Archer
Francisco Cabanillas
ii
ABSTRACT
Amílcar Challú, Advisor
In Mexican history, corn is far more than a culinary ingredient or farm product. Corn has
been a cultural emblem and key component to the country’s national identity that throughout the
twentieth-century the Mexican government embraced. However, since the adoption of neoliberal
economic policies, which by necessity involves particular political policies, many Mexicans feel
that corn’s significance in the country has changed. Over the last three decades public discontent
with corn policies, which the public translates as anti-neoliberalism policies, has gradually
grown. This thesis chronicles the growing discontent over corn policies and, more importantly,
demonstrates how Mexican people have evolved to become agents for recentralizing corn in the
country’s political, economic, and cultural discourses.
iii
This thesis is dedicated to Precious Vida Yamaguchi and Sonya JoJo Caire for their
overwhelming support and tolerating my anxiety I had throughout writing this thesis. This
modest contribution to Latin American history is also dedicated to the people who are doing
what they can to preserve maíz criollo and other treasured cultural artifacts from the threat of
being lost due to economics and politics.
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first person that deserves acknowledgement for the completion of this thesis is Dr.
Amílcar Challú. His commitment to helping me take on this topic and patience in dealing with
my shortcomings as a student cannot be overstated. I can only hope that this thesis serves as a
respectable reflection of Dr. Challú’s excellence as a historian of Latin America, leader and
mentor. Dr. Cabanillas should be acknowledged for his insightful ideas and suggestions. Dr.
Archer must be acknowledged for not only being a member of my thesis committee even though
Mexican history is far from her research interests, but because she taught me about the
frameworks of international political economy, which was key to the completion of this project.
Finally, I must acknowledge Bowling Green State University’s Department of History for their
financial and academic support towards the completion of this thesis.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................
1
CHAPTER I. CORN IN THE CITIES: ACCESS TO TORTILLAS IN MEXICO CITY, 19402008………………………………………………………………………………………...
6
Affordability of Tortillas in Mexico……………………...……………………...….
7
Sources……………………………………….............................................. …… …
8
Trends in the affordability of tortillas………………………………………………
14
Access to Tortillas, 1940-1972……………………………………………………..
15
Access to Tortillas, 1973-1994……………………………………………………..
21
Real Tortilla Prices, 1995-2008…………………………………………………….
29
Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………
34
CHAPTER II. FROM COMMONPLACE TO CONCERN: CORN IN MEXICO’S RURAL
AREAS, 1934-2008 ............................................................................................................
37
Mexico’s Campesinos and Corn, 1934-1940……………………………………….
39
Corn and the Green Revolution in Mexico’s Countryside, 1940-1981…………….
42
Corn in the Neoliberal Era, 1981-1994…………………………….……………….
48
Corn and Campesinos during the Free Trade Era and Globalization, 1995-2008….
52
Conclusions …………………………………………………………………………
63
CHAPTER III. CORN, NEOLIBERALISM AND POPULAR UNREST IN MEXICO, 19932008…………………………………………………………………………………............
66
Sources ……………………………………………………………………………..
67
A History of Protests Related to Corn Policies in Modern Mexico………………..
69
vi
Campesinos and Mexico’s Corn Policies in the 1990s…………………..….....…..
71
Mexico’s Problems Related to Corn Policies Expands: Urban and Environmental
Movements………………………………………………………………..………...
76
Mexico’s Corn Problems Spread…………………………………………………...
82
Corn Becomes a National Spectacle…………………………………..…………...
87
Conclusions………………………………………………………………………...
97
CONCLUSIONS…………………………………………………………………………..
101
REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................
106
APPENDIX A. WAGES.......................................................................................................
114
APPENDIX B. TORTILLA PRICES ...................................................................................
116
vii
LIST OF FIGURES/TABLES
Figure/Table
1
Index of Popular Wages in Mexico, 1940-2008 (1984=100) ....................................
2
Wage-Corrected Tortilla Prices Index for Mexico City and National Urban Centers
Page
11
(2002=100)………….……………………………………………………………...
12
3
Wage-Corrected Tortilla Prices Index, 1940-2008 (1940=100)……………………
13
4
Federal District daily manufacturing wages and tortilla prices, 1940-1972..............
18
5
Federal District daily manufacturing wages and tortilla prices, 1973-1994..............
21
6
National daily manufacturing wages and Mexico City tortilla prices, 1995-2008 ....
29
7
Political cartoon representing the death of criollo Mexican corn, by Rafael Barajas
85
INTRODUCTION
1
On March 18, 1938, Lázaro Cárdenas, the Mexican president at the time, expropriated
Mexico’s oil industry. After much conflict, unsatisfactory negotiating with foreign oil
companies, and threats of foreign intervention, Cárdenas expropriated the assets of nearly all the
foreign oil companies operating in Mexico. Many Mexicans saw Cárdenas’ decision as a symbol
of nationalistic pride. Josephus Daniels, the American ambassador to Mexico, recalled that in
the aftermath of the celebration around the country because of the act that thousands of people
marched on the Zócalo, the country’s most famous plaza, offering donations to compensate the
oil companies for their expropriated assets. Describing the celebration, Daniels explained, “They
took off wedding rings, bracelets, earrings, and put them, as it seemed to them, on a national
altar…When night came crowds still waited to deposit their offerings, which comprised
everything from gold and silver to animals and corn.”1 The donations made it clear that people
believed that a Mexico without transnational oil profits would survive. Mexicans’ donations also
exemplified to the world that in Mexico, Sin maíz, no hay país (Without corn, there is no
country).
Mexicans’ “corn for oil” gestures after the expropriation in 1938 exemplified the intimate
connection between corn and Mexicans. Along with valuable metals and farm animals, corn was
considered a unit valuable or worthy enough to be exchanged for perhaps Mexico’s most
profitable natural resource. Symbolically, in exchange for the national state gaining economic
independence, corn, the country’s most valued grain, was seen as a worthy “donation” to foreign
companies for their losses. Throughout history, for millions of Mexicans corn has been regarded
as more than a grain that was born in the country. It has been regarded as a religious deity,
1
Michael
Gonzales,
The
Mexican
Revolution,
1910­1940
(Albuquerque,
New
Mexico:
University
of
New
Mexico
Press,
2002),
252.
commodity, symbol of life, representation for nationalistic pride, product for occupation,
2
commodity, ingredient for food, and cultural emblem.
Corn, scientifically known as Zea mays, originated in Mexico. According to Nadal, a
great part of the evolution that may be observed in terms of corn’s genetic variability took place
in Mexico.2 Scenes of corn, and its diverse colors and sizes, can be traced back to preColumbian times in Mexico City.3 In the early twentieth-century, Emiliano Zapata, regarded as
a member of Mexico’s pantheon of national heroes, is known for being the champion of the
country’s hombres de maíz (the people of corn).4 In addition, the Mexican government, through
propaganda and pseudo-scientific findings, tried to persuade Mexicans off their dietary reliance
on corn for decades, going as far as saying that corn was a symbol of backwardness and
hindrance to Mexican modernization from the 1890s to the 1940s. Nevertheless, by 1943, corn
was found to have substantial nutritional value and its dietary importance to Mexicans was
unquestioned.5 Anthropological studies published in the early-1990s explain how some
indigenous groups, specifically the Nahuas, continued to regard corn as “the absolute necessity
of life, the source of nourishment that takes precedence over all others [foods].”6 As will be
measured and discussed, corn has remained a valuable part of Mexicans in a modern context.
Furthermore, corn’s historical importance to national identity and dietary significance make it
imperative that people can afford the grain.
2
Alejandro
Nadal,
“Mexican
Corn:
Genetic
Variability
and
Trade
Liberalization.”
PROCIENTIC,
Documento
de
Trabajo
No.
1‐0
(Mexico,
D.F.:
El
Colegio
de
México,
2001),
1.
3
Jeffrey
M.
Pilcher,
Que
vivan
los
tamales:
Food
and
the
Making
of
the
Mexican
Identity
(Albuquerque:
University
of
New
Mexico
Press,
1998),
8.
4
Tom
Barry,
Zapata’s
Revenge:
Free
Trade
and
the
Farm
Crisis
in
Mexico
(Boston:
South
End
Press,
1995),
2.
5
Pilcher
93‐97.
6
Alan
R.
Sandstrom.
Corn
Is
Our
Blood:
Culture
and
Ethnic
Identity
in
a
Contemporary
Aztec
Indian
Village
(University
of
Oklahoma
Press:
Norman,
Oklahoma,
1991),
128.
3
The acquisition or the production of corn over recent decades, particularly over the last
two decades, has become problematic. More specifically, corn has become more expensive on
the global markets and urban consumers have had more difficulties purchasing tortillas,
especially because tortillas are no longer subsidized by the government, which has led to large
protests in cities. Corn subsidies aimed towards Mexican small agricultural producers have also
been removed over recent decades, which has led to the competition from the U.S. to damaging
local corn producers. These changes follow national policies in Mexico in which the state
maintained very basic levels of protection for consumers and peasants. Both groups have taken
issue at neoliberal policies behind their loss in welfare and organized resistance to them. Only
recently, however, both urban and rural protest has converged, albeit briefly, in presenting a
united block to revise neoliberal policies. In the midst of these protests, the groups are
reiterating the belief that in Mexico there is no country without corn.
In urban centers around Mexico, tortilla prices today have become unavoidable and
impossible to ignore. Protests numbering in the tens of thousands and other smaller expressions
of discontent with tortilla prices have become common. As discussed in Chapter 1, wagecorrected tortilla prices over the last two decades have been the highest they have in nearly 50
years and citizens’ complaints seem accurate. Moreover, the rise in prices strongly correlates
with Mexico’s decision to open or liberalize its economy and adopt neoliberal policies. Hence,
high prices on a product that historically was protected through some form of trade protection
and has been a regarded as a fundamental cultural food could be a reflection of adopting
neoliberal policies, which conflates the tortilla and corn policies in Mexico with discussions
concerning economics and politics. The extent to which corn and tortillas are related to larger
and more abstract discussions is discussed at length in the first chapter.
4
While urban consumers have shown outright protests concerning the prices of tortillas,
Mexico’s problems related to corn in its countryside go beyond anxieties over rising prices. As
discussed at great length in Chapter 2, concerns related to corn in Mexico’s rural areas extend
into arguments involving the environment, subsidies, fair prices, biodiversity, transnational
companies, cultural traditions, livelihoods, rural entitlements, globalization and agriculture.
Over the course of the last seven decades, changes in Mexico’s political and economic
landscapes have had dramatic effects on the countryside and several problems correlated to corn
have come about because of the changes. How these discourses developed and changed are
fleshed out in the second chapter. Furthermore, Chapter 2, discusses the history of how corn
became part of debates or conversations concerning the mentioned topics in rural areas.
Collectively, the complaints and grievances related to corn from urban and rural Mexico
have by chance formed the country’s current “corn conflict.” The third chapter of this thesis
concerns how the corn controversy evolved and developed. Using available sources, Chapter 3
chronicles how the disagreements with government policies related to corn started in the
countryside by quite small groups of farmers and turned into much larger and diverse. Mexico’s
corn controversy has become large enough that scenes of hundreds and thousands of protestors
marched in the Zócalo or other parts of the country over a number of matters related to corn.
Insight into who these protestors are, their demands and methods, and significance are all fleshed
out in the final chapter. Moreover, this chapter explains how effective or ineffective the protests
have been and draws other conclusions about the problems related to corn.
Throughout Mexican history, corn, similar to other foods in other countries and cultures,
has been considered an afterthought or commonplace. The regards for corn have magnified and
have been vocalized loudly over recent decades, however. Economic and political policies
5
related to corn in Mexico today are at the center of national and local controversies. Together,
the different tensions involving corn form what should be considered a changing of the
significance of a fundamental part of Mexico’s history.
6
CHAPTER I. CORN IN THE CITIES: ACCESS TO TORTILLAS IN MEXICO CITY, 19402008
The popular public protest by many Mexicans concerning access to affordable and
native-grown corn, while quite noticeable in very recent years, has a history. Public
demonstrations, such as the march on the Zócalo, Mexico City’s historical plaza, aimed at
alleviating high corn prices are not entirely newfound concepts.7 This is because the country has
dealt with high corn prices and subsequent public outcry several times before Mexico adopted
neoliberal economic policies after 1982 and joined the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) in 1994. However, recent popular protests in Mexico concerning the price of tortillas,
the most consumed byproduct of corn, and corn prices have had strong anti-free trade and antiliberalism themes. Another common theme in the protests has been the appeals that people have
made are aimed towards the Mexican government to provide some relief to curtail what they
believe to be a proliferation of prices because of macroeconomic policies. The protests and
appeals, moreover, have been large enough that they have received national and international
media attention.
While there has been significant scholarship pertaining to corn prices and popular unrest
in Mexico, works truly testing an “average” Mexican’s ability to access corn or tortillas have
been few. The prices of tortillas and corn could indeed have increased for many Mexicans and
their protests could be justified. On the other hand, when historical prices and wages are
examined, the idea that prices are rising could be debunked and thereby diminish the validity of
the protests. With these possibilities in mind, a form of measuring the historical affordability
and access to corn is appropriate. More specifically, a historical measure of how much corn a
7
Greenpeace
Mexico,
“Velada
por
el
maíz,”
[video],
Youtube.com,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qV6kQ_Cl10.
7
rank-and-file Mexican can afford becomes ideal research to investigate whether recent protests
were viable or unfounded.
Research about corn prices and popular access to corn also leads to political and
economic examinations of the protests in Mexico. If prices are rising and rising for only certain
populations, and is this rise felt by some groups more than others, then one must question which
groups are being protected (or not protected) from rising prices. Conversely, if prices have not
been rising when compared to the past, then the question of why the protests persist should be
addressed. Could the protests be masking changes in Mexico’s political landscape that have
made the protests possible? Or, could the protests over high prices really be attributed to
changes in the country’s macroeconomic policies, neoliberalism, free trade, and other themes
heard involved in the recent unrest? Examining and analyzing political trends in Mexico,
particularly after the 1980s and 1990s, when huge economic and political changes occurred,
could answer important questions and reveal more about the frequent and popular unrest.
Affordability of Tortillas in Mexico
Being able to afford corn, however, involves a number of factors. There are the wages
that a person earns. In addition, there are prices for a product, in this case, tortillas and corn.
Also, there are real wages, which are wages divided by a price index. Price indices are generated
using a consumer basket of goods, which, for Mexicans, corn has always had a prominent place
within. Real wages allow for relatively accurate measurements of changes in purchasing power.
As Jeffrey Bortz and Marcos Aguila point out, wages, particularly real wages, have played an
important role in Mexican history. Real wages played such an important role in the country’s
history that the social upheaval of Mexico’s revolution, between 1910-1921, “convinced many
8
8
Mexicans that there was a wage problem and that it needed to be understood and dealt with.”
The problem was, indeed, responded to. Evidence of the government’s concern over wages was
clear with the inclusion of a mandated minimum wage in the country’s 1917 constitution.
Moreover, since 1929, with the Dirección General de Estadística (General Director of Statistics)
and the Banco de México (Bank of Mexico), the Mexican government has made efforts to
publish systematic price indexes and study wages throughout the country.9 In other words,
throughout the twentieth-century the Mexican government has considered the regulation of
wages and prices of basic products priorities involving in governing.
An appropriate method to determine Mexicans’ ability to afford corn is to examine corn
prices and peoples’ wages over a significant period of years. More specifically, prices of corn’s
largest derivative, tortillas, should be examined with manufacturing wages. For urban Mexicans
the prices of tortillas represent the price of corn, because they are the largest and most consumed
product of corn. During a given period, if wages grow while prices fall or remain stagnant, then
it can be inferred that the ability to afford tortillas improved. Or, if wages fall while prices also
fall, then it can again be assumed that tortillas remained as affordable as before. In short, by
deflating tortilla prices by wages I understand that affordability changes as a function of income
and price. This scenario of wages and prices varying and following different patterns, and thus
changing the ability to afford tortillas, has been what has happened to Mexican consumers from
1940 to 2007.
Sources
8
Marcos
Aguila
and
Jeffrey
Bortz,
“Earning
a
Living:
A
History
of
Real
Wage
Studies
in
Twentieth‐Century
Mexico,”
Latin
American
Research
Review
(volume
41,
number
2,
June
2006),
121.
9
Ibid.
121‐122.
9
An index of wage-corrected tortilla prices showing Mexicans’ purchasing power of the
product from 1940 to 2008 was constructed from reliable Mexican sources. Estadísticas
Históricas de México (Historical Statistics of Mexico), a publication of historical statistics made
by the Instituto
Nacional
de
Estadísticas,
Geografía
e
Informatica
(INEGI;
National
Institute
of
Statistics,
Geography
and
Informatics)
and
dependent
of
the
Mexican
government,
has
been
widely
used
as
a
source
for
statistics
concerning
population,
prices,
employment,
and
a
number
of
other
topics.
INEGI
also
maintains
online
databases
that
have
statistical
data
extending
up
to
very
recent
years
concerning
many
of
the
same
topics
mentioned.
The
Banco de México has been compiling material, such as consumer prices indices, nominal prices
and wages, since 1929 and is the most authoritative source concerning prices indexes in Mexico.
Both sources are respected and widely used, even if not perfect.
Mexico City, which is the capital of Mexico, was selected as the location where statistics
were collected for important reasons. Important scholarship has been dedicated to prove Mexico
City’s political and economic primacy over the whole of the country. Between 1900 and 1940
Mexican cities grew at immense rates. Mexico City was the city that grew the most. By 1980,
Mexico City was one of the most populated cities in the world with a population estimated
between fourteen and sixteen million people.10 Maria Castillo also attested to the fact that
Mexico City, during the heart of the twentieth-century, “consolidated its role as the primary cityregion in Mexico.”11 Diane Davis’ Urban Leviathan was dedicated entirely to demonstrating
Mexico City’s disproportional influence on national politics and the country’s development
10
Peter
H.
Smith,
“Mexico
since
1946:
Dynamics
of
an
authoritarian
regime,”
in
Mexico
since
Independence,
ed.
Leslie
Bethell
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press,
1991),
330.
11
Maria
Teresa
Vazquez
Castillo,
Land
Privatization
in
Mexico:
Urbanization,
Formation
of
Regions,
and
Globalization
in
Ejidos
(New
York,
NY:
Routledge,
2004),
62.
10
12
before and especially after 1910. The availability of data and the simplicity of the data also
justified selecting the capital for examining wage-corrected tortilla prices. Moreover, prices and
wages in Mexico City have historically been correlated to other large cities in the country.
There were several sets of published wages and earnings utilized to create the indexes.
Estadísticas provided weekly manufacturing wages in Mexico for different years from 1940 to
1985.13 An online version of the Estadísticas provided average household incomes and median
family incomes in Mexico for several years between the years 1963 and 1992.14 In addition,
median household wages were collected from the United Nations University’s World Institute
for Development Economics Research, during available years after 1992.15 Finally, other sets of
wages used were average manufacturing wages, in Mexico City, provided by Banco de México
between 1968 and 2008.16 Collectively, manufacturing wages and household earnings were used
because they were well correlated to other measures of income. Moreover, the wages and
earnings represented what could be considered popular incomes over the given period in the
country’s most influential region.
The different sets of wages were used to show the evolution of what can be considered
popular wages in Mexico. As seen in Figure 1, the historical trends of each of the two sets of
manufacturing wages followed the same pattern, which was moderate increases between 1940
12
Diane
Davis,
Urban
Leviathan:
Mexico
City
in
the
Twentieth
Century
(Philadelphia:
Temple
University
press,
1994),
xi.
13
Instituto
Nacional
de
Estadística,
Geografía
e
Informatica
(INEGI).
Estadísticas
Históricas
de
México,
Tomo
1,
(Mexico
City:
Secretaria
de
Promación
y
Presupuesto,
1985),
179.
14
Instituto
Tecnológico
Autónomo
de
México
(ITAM;
Autonomous
Technological
Institute
of
Mexico),
Biblioteca
Raúl
Bailleres
Jr.
Library,
Estadísticas
Históricas
de
México,
Salarios
[Salaries],
5.16.1‐5.16.8.
http://biblioteca.itam.mx/recursos/ehm.html.
15
United
Nations
University,
World
Institute
for
Development
Research,
“Summary
features
of
WIID2C,”
http://www.wider.unu.edu/research/Database/en_GB/wiid/#site.
16
Banco
de
México.
“Total
de
la
industria
manufacturera
no
maquiladora
[Total
of
manufacturing
industry,
not
including
maquiladora],”
http://www.banxico.org.mx/polmoneinflacion/estadisticas/laboral/laboral.html.
11
and the mid to late-1960s, and large growth thereafter. Manufacturing wages, more importantly,
had close correlations to the national median household incomes and average family incomes
during the available years. In fact, the household and family incomes almost directly followed
the same trajectories of manufacturing wages. In addition, the Mexico City manufacturing
wages (labeled Manufacturing Wages) were quite close to the national manufacturing wages and
other datasets, which justified their use as being representative of national incomes.
Figure 1 Index of Popular Wages in Mexico, 1940-2008 (1984=100)
Sources. See text.
Note. Wages measured in pesos per day.
The historical prices of tortillas were gathered from Estadísticas Históricas and Banco de
México. Nominal tortilla prices, in Mexico City, from Estadísticas for the period between 1940
and 1979 were compiled.17 An online archive of monthly consumer prices indices maintained by
Banco provided monthly tortilla prices, also from Mexico City, from 1969 to 2008.18 Drawing
on prices from two different sources created the problem that a reliable history of prices could
not be constructed. This problem being that each source had scales different from one another
17
Instituto
Nacional
de
Estadística,
Geografía
e
Informatica
(INEGI).
Estadísticas
Históricas
de
México.
Tomo
[Volume]
2.
(Mexico
City:
Secretaria
de
Promación
y
Presupuesto,
1985),
745‐746.
18
Banco
de
México.
“Índices
de
Precios
al
Consumidor
[Consumer
Price
Indices],”
http://www.banxico.org/mx/tipo/Estadísticas/index.html.
12
and could not be compared. However, the two sets of prices were appropriately compared and
scaled using common years.19 Hence, a continuous evolution of tortilla prices, from 1940 to
2008, was put together.
The potential problem of using Mexico City tortilla prices as representative national
prices was taken into account and resolved. A national average of tortilla prices was constructed
using the average price of tortillas in four large urban areas (Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla,
Ciudad Juarez) in the country by using Banco de México’s national index of consumer prices.
Banco’s available indexes allowed prices to be compared between Mexico City and the national
average prices from 1979 to 2008. 20 The fact that Mexico City’s prices were closely related to
the average of the other four large urban centers justified the use of tortilla prices from the
capital as proxies for national prices. Tortilla prices before 1979 would have been an ideal way
of measuring the evolution of tortilla prices, but the sources available did not allow this option.
In part, this was because all four urban centers used to generate national average prices only had
prices after 1979 available, and were inconsistent and not continuous prior to this year. In any
case, the data from 1979 to 2008 showed a strong correlation.
Figure 2 Wage-Corrected Tortilla Prices Index for Mexico City and National Urban Centers
(2002=100)
19
Both
sources
had
price
listings
between
1969
and
1979.
Between
these
years,
the
rate
of
growth
for
Estadísticas
Históricas
price
listings
was
245
percent.
The
rate
of
growth
for
Banco
de
México
price
listings
during
the
same
period
was
400
percent.
The
discrepancy
can
be
attributed
to
a
rounding
problem
in
the
initial
years
of
the
Banco
de
México
series.
20
Banco
de
México.
“Índices
de
Precios
al
Consumidor
[Consumer
Price
Indices],
por
ciudad
[each
individual
city
was
selected],
tortillas
y
derivados
del
maíz
and
maíz
[tortillas
and
corn
derivatives
and
corn],”
http://www.banxico.org.mx/polmoneinflacion/estadisticas/indicesPrecios/indicesPrecios
Consumidor.html.
Banco
de
México.
“Índices
de
Precios
al
Consumidor
[Consumer
Price
Indices],
Area
Metropolitana
de
la
Ciudad
de
México
[Metropolitan
Mexico
City],”
http://www.banxico.org/mx/tipo/Estadísticas/index.html.
13
Sources. See text.
Notes. Prices measured in pesos per kilogram.
Using the series of tortilla prices and wages, a final index showing wage-adjusted tortilla
prices was constructed. Essentially, wage-adjusted prices of a product are nominal or “off the
shelf” prices that a consumer pays divided by wages. Wage-adjusted or -corrected prices
measure just how expensive (or inexpensive) a product has been because the actual prices that
consumers pay are offset by how much a person earns. In Figure 3, wage-corrected tortilla
prices, using daily manufacturing wages as representative of popular Mexican incomes, between
1940 and 2008 are presented. In essence, the graph shows a historical index or comparison of
how many kilograms of tortillas a working Mexican in Mexico City could afford with a day’s
worth of work in the manufacturing sector between 1940 and 2008.
Figure 3 Wage-Corrected Tortilla Prices Index, 1940-2008 (1940=100)
14
Sources. See text.
Notes. The Y axis is the ratio of Mexico City tortilla prices (pesos per kilogram) over average
daily manufacturing wages (measured in pesos).
Trends in the Affordability of Tortillas
Simply looking at wage-corrected tortilla prices in Mexico City from 1940 to 2008
certainly cannot be the absolute final determinant that explains the access to the most important
food product in Mexico. However, the index in the country’s most important city does provide
significant aid in measuring Mexicans’ access to corn in urban locations. The index also shows
the historical trends of tortillas prices, which corroborates scholarship suggesting that political
regimes in Mexico had an active role in ensuring food security as a means of establishing and
maintaining their political legitimacy. In addition, the index gives a representation of how the
ability to afford tortillas has been connected to Mexico’s economic decisions. Moreover, the
index clearly demonstrates that tortilla prices experienced three periods of change from 1940 to
2008.
The index presents what looks to be important long-term variations in tortilla prices.
Starting in 1940 prices experienced large decreases until the 1970s. More specifically, prices
decreased from an index level of 100 to just below 30, a substantial decrease in prices.
Thereafter prices tended to remain within a relatively consistent range, with the exception of
some years in the mid-1970s and 1980s, until a new trend started after 1994. After 1994, prices
continuously increased, albeit with the exception of some years after 2000. It should also be
noted that after 2006 prices were at levels that Mexican consumers had not seen since the late1950s. More importantly, prices after 1994 were characterized by steady increase with little to
no interruptions, which could suggest that future prices will continue to increase. These three
periods of intense decreases, relative stability and gradual escalation in prices lend themselves
15
well to dividing them into three periods. Comparing these three periods of tortilla prices with
scholarship concerning political and economic discourses in Mexico during the given periods
truly helps explain these trends.
Access to Tortillas, 1940-1972
During the first period (1940-1972), Mexico City’s population experienced dramatic
decreases in the price of tortillas. Essentially, in less than two decades the nominal price (the
price of corn in stores or “off the shelf”) increased almost five times. These increases coincided,
however, with meaningful increases in wages, which brought down wage-corrected tortilla
prices. To simply attribute the growth in prices during this period to market relationships and/or
increases of manufacturing wages in Mexico’s Federal District would be incorrect. There were
extremely significant political realities and economic dynamics behind what happened to prices
over the period.
The political and economic context of Mexico during this period begins with the end of
Cardenismo. Essentially, Cardenismo was the label attached to the political and economic
policies of president Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940). In 1934, when Cárdenas took office, Mexico
had lived in relative political and social stability for a little over a decade since the end of its
bloody revolution in 1921. After the presidencies of Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Calles
basically failed to live up to the social and political values of the Mexican revolution, which
included land reform, supporting the peasant masses and incorporating the peasants into the
national political fold, Mexico was ripe for Cardenismo. However, being a champion of the
people during this time meant catering to the rural masses, which were the majority of the
Mexican population, by embodying revolutionary ideals.
16
Cárdenas won Mexico’s presidency through the political coalitions he formed with the
labor groups and at the time what was a newly formed constituency: campesinos. Christopher
Boyer’s, Becoming Campesinos, chronicled how the rural masses and agraristas of Mexico
gained a “political voice” and “privileged position within the post-revolutionary nation” via
Cárdenas’ catering.21 In return for political support provided by the campesinos, Cárdenas
carried out massive land reform for rural groups. He did this via the newly created ejido system
(communal lands for cultivation), increased state spending to build infrastructure for the
countryside, and created Mexico’s first State Food Agency (SFA).22 What was important about
Cardenismo was that future regimes would have to deal with corporate political ties to the
masses of the country. These ties, moreover, involved heavy state intervention in economic
markets, including corn and tortilla prices.
Inflation in Mexico’s burgeoning urban centers (the population in Mexico City grew by
more than thirty percent in the 1930s) soared during the Cardenas’ term.23 This inflation drove
up the price of basic foods, such as corn, in cities and coincided with an increase of thirty-two
percent in daily minimum wages in urban areas, but, more importantly, a fifty-seven percent
increase in the cost of living. These circumstances led to protests by Cardenas’ urban labor
supporters, the Confederación de Trabajadores Méxicanos (CTM; Confederation of Mexican
Workers).24 To ease the price of corn and other foods for urban groups the Mexican government
began purchasing grains from the countryside, which helped alleviate the problems in the
21
Christopher
R.
Boyer,
Becoming
Campesinos:
Politics,
Identity,
and
Agrarian
Struggle
in
Agrarian
Michoacán,
1920­1935
(Stanford,
California:
Stanford
University
Press,
2003),
225.
22
Enrique
C.
Ochoa,
Feeding
Mexico:
The
Political
Uses
of
Food
since
1910
(Wilmington,
Delaware:
Scholarly
Resources
Inc.,
2000),
39.
23
Davis
329.
24
Ochoa
46.
cities.25 Essentially, in Mexico City, the government solidified a pattern of appeasing urban
17
constituents represented by organizations incorporated to the ruling party, such as the CTM, with
cheap prices for foods instead of helping wages keep pace with inflation. These prices, created
via significant market manipulation and stopgap measures, which Enrique Ochoa calls “ad hoc
and unsystematic,” would set the precedent for future ill-planned political strategies and poor
economic interventions in food markets that brought down the price of food products.26
After 1940, Mexico’s embrace of the ISI (import substitution industrialization)
development model entailed, among other policies, more intervention in grain markets. In
attempts to stimulate the domestic market, discourage targeted imports, and enhance the
country’s agricultural efficiency, the Mexican government allowed the Rockefeller Foundation
and Mexican agronomists to introduce hybrid seed varieties, modern techniques and farm
machinery to the country.27 At the time, however, Mexico’s “Green Revolution” could not
withstand wartime inflation, particularly in 1942 and 1943, and poor harvests. Also during this
time, according to Bortz, workers cost of living in Mexico City had more than tripled. In
addition, the average real industrial wage in the city had declined from 25.73 pesos a week in
1940, to 14.15 pesos in 1946.28 Kevin Middlebrook also made the point that real minimum
wages fell sharply before and immediately after World War II, which highlighted a loss of
purchasing power in Mexico City.29 In 1943, this inflation, coupled with poor corn harvests,
created riots in the capital, which compelled President Manuel Ávila Camacho to intervene in
25
Ibid.
47.
26
Ibid.
64.
27
David
A.
Sonnenfeld,
“Mexico’s
‘Green
Revolution,’
1940‐1980:
Towards
an
Environmental
History,”
Environmental
Monthly
Review
(volume
14,
number
1,
1992):
31‐
32.
28
Ochoa
77.
29
Kevin
J.
Middlebrook,
The
Paradox
of
Revolution:
Labor,
the
State,
and
Authoritarianism
in
Mexico
(Baltimore,
Maryland:
The
John
Hopkins
University
Press,
1995),
216.
18
grain markets. An expansion of the network of government food outlets in Mexico City and
effectively manipulating the prices of basic foodstuffs brought food prices down and calmed
popular unrest.30
Figure 4 Federal District daily manufacturing wages and tortilla prices, 1940-1972.
Source. Estadísticas Históricas de México and Banco de México.
Notes. Wages measured in pesos. Tortilla prices measured in pesos per kilogram.
More importantly, what became very clear again during the period immediately before
and after World War II was the fact that the Mexican government was keen to get involved in
market spaces to curtail public discontent over corn prices. The Partido Revolucionario
Institucional (PRI), Mexico’s presidential regime from the 1940s to 2000, displayed a vested
interest in keeping their favored urban, middle-class worker constituency at bay. Essentially,
Camacho and the PRI did what they had to in order to maintain a semblance of order and quell
protests. The ways in which the state’s actions to appease its privileged constituents can be seen
in Figure 4, which shows that while tortilla prices were increasing, wages also increased and kept
a relative pace. Mexico’s regime ensured urban residents that while tortilla prices were
increasing, wages, specifically manufacturing wages, kept growing, thus bringing prices down.
Although the actions were politically motivated and aimed at helping only certain populations,
30
Ochoa
80.
19
the state still displayed a pattern of supplying cheap food prices to its privileged constituents. In
other words, maintaining affordable prices of Mexico’s most important food staple helped
sustaining the legitimacy of the ruling regime.
By the 1950s, the state’s pattern of doing what was necessary to please their urban
constituents continued despite some setbacks. In an attempt to stimulate Mexico out of a
lingering recession after World War II, the peso was devalued by over one hundred percent
between June 1948 and June 1949. In addition, poor harvests in 1950-1951 created more
inflation for urban workers. Consumer prices in cities began to rise, too, and urban workers
began demanding higher wages.31 According to Bortz’s index of consumer cost of living in
Mexico City, the cost of living in 1946 was 305.67 pesos and by 1952 the figure was at 607,
while wages barely showed increases. These conditions were present during a time when a
Mexicans’ average per capita corn consumption was more than ten ounces per day; this fact only
complicated the PRI’s position to deliver social provisions to its citizenry.32 The PRI’s response,
as Ochoa said, was to “Once again, in the process of rolling back the social promises of the
revolution, food subsides were offered as a substitute for [an] improved standard of living.”33 In
essence, the state expanded its presence in food markets and managed to manipulate prices
enough that wages were able to continue keeping pace with tortilla prices.
Mexico’s economy, as a whole, grew between the 1950s and into the early 1970s. The
country’s gross domestic product (GDP) had doubled between 1940 and 1952, with much of the
31
Ibid.
112.
32
Arturo Warman, Corn & Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance,
Translated by Nancy L. Westerate (United States of America: The University of North Carolina
Press, 2003), 143.
33
Ochoa
113.
20
34
growth attributable to urban-led industrialization. As seen in Figure 4, urban wages displayed
substantial growth and, to a degree, outpaced growths in tortilla prices. Urbanization created
conflict between city groups and rural groups who migrated to the city, but these situations were
handled by the state through an expansion of the SFA and guaranteed cheap food prices from the
mid to late-1960s.35 The economy’s growth allowed President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines to supply
more than 700 molinos de nixtamal (corn mills) with enough subsidized corn to produce more
than a million kilograms of tortillas per day during the middle to late-1950s.36 Furthermore,
between 1965 and 1969, the state’s network of SFA grain storage units nearly tripled.37 More
importantly, the PRI’s troubles were handled and the overall growth of Mexico’s economy was
sustained.
By the early-1970s, however, the period of decreasing wage-corrected tortilla prices
ended. In part, this was due to urban middle-class demand for meat products that motivated
large commercial farmers began a focus on cultivating corn for fodder. With this in mind, the
Mexican government increased its efforts to help large-scale capital based agricultural
production by offering larger subsides to larger producers, and access to products such as
fertilizers and seed. This choice shifted motivation for corn farmers to reduce the amount of
production dedicated towards tortilla consumers. Prices also stopped falling because wages
stagnated to an extent during the early 1970s. By 1971, only a year removed from achieving
self-sufficiency in food security, and despite national economic growth, Mexico began importing
34
Ibid.
127.
35
Davis
132.
Ochoa
134.
36
Ochoa
144.
37
Ibid.
169.
corn from the United States.38 Furthermore, after 1972, tortilla prices did not continue to
21
decrease much further and ended what had been a period of continually decreasing prices.
Access to Tortillas, 1973-1994
The second period of wage-corrected tortilla prices was largely characterized by longterm stability but volatility in the short run. Patterns of manufacturing wages and tortilla prices
quite mirrored one another (Figure 5). Moreover, with the exception of the 1973 global oil crisis
and the country’s economic crisis in the mid-1980s, prices remained within a certain index level
of 20-30 (Figure 3). Prices even fell below to their lowest levels throughout the entire period
mentioned (1940-2008) in the early-1990s. This was primarily done through even larger
increases in the size and purview of the SFA, which meant a larger state presence in economic
sectors, and what could have been called a smooth transition to a neoliberal economic model.
This period, furthermore, highlighted the PRI’s policy of supplying food security in order to
maintain the appearance of political legitimacy in the eyes of its major constituents, and the
beginnings of political unrest around the country.
Figure 5 Federal District daily manufacturing wages and tortilla prices, 1973-1994.
Source. Estadísticas Históricas de México and Banco de México.
Notes. Wages measured in pesos. Tortilla prices measured in pesos per kilogram.
38
Kirsten
Appendini,
“Tracing
the
Maize‐Tortilla
Chain,”
UN
Chronicle
(New
York:
volume
45,
2008),
66.
22
Evidence of the PRI’s political troubles was seen as early as the late-1960s. Many people
dissatisfied with what they felt was a poor and inefficient government, and even repressive,
responded with public protests and other forms of demonstration. Many youths throughout the
country, along with residents of the country’s rural areas, felt marginalized by the regime and
questioned the democratic policies of the PRI. In response to the backlashes against the regime,
which included the Tlatelolco Massacre of 1968 and rural guerilla activities, PRI presidents Luis
Echeverría Álvarez (1970-1976) and José López Portillo (1976-1982) made further efforts to
quell public discontent. Both presidents also made expansions of the SFA, and its operational
subsidiaries to unprecedented heights between 1970 and 1982, as pillars for quelling popular
displeasure for the government.39
Echeverría and López Portillo both dealt with inflation through expanding the social
welfare role of the SFA and further entrenching the Mexican state in economic sectors,
particularly the basic foodstuffs sector. Echeverria started his history of social provisioning by
creating more than half a dozen state subsidiaries of the SFA, called CONASUPO [Compañía
Nacional de Subsistencias Populares [National Company of Popular Subsistence]) by the 1970s,
which included LICONSA (Leche Industrializado [Industrialized Dairies]) and MACONSA
(Maíz Industrializado [Industrialized Corn]). Each agency was designed to alleviate some of the
affects of global and national inflation through government-sponsored corn milling operations,
milk recombination plans and wheat flouring plants. Echeverría also created other state-
39
Ochoa
177.
23
dependent subsidiaries of CONASUPO that even processed cheap foods, such as crackers and
pasta, for urban populations.40
The beginning of the López Portillo presidency was met with a slumping economy,
which left many citizens uneasy with the PRI. Mexico’s petroleum boom, however, allowed
López Portillo to expanded the CONASUPO and further entrench the state in economic sectors
in order to calm citizens’ unrest. López Portillo to expanded the CONASUPO and tried to help
Mexico’s rural agricultural providers run more efficiently and supply urban residents more
effectively, through state-sponsored companies like the SAM (Sistema Alimentaria Mexicana
[Mexican Alimentary System]).41 To further help sustain the city-based corn flour and tortilla
industries, the government went as far as purchasing imported unnecessary amounts of corn from
the international market at prices above market levels.42 This action sufficed at the time and for
at least a decade thereafter, however.
As Figure 5 shows, after 1972 tortilla prices grew during nearly each of the years, but the
period was generally characterized by proportional increases in wages. Much of this was
attributed to the fact that state entities, such as MACONSA, actually were competitors in the
tortilla distribution and production process. In essence, the state was able to effectively keep the
consumer price of tortillas, and thereby corn, down by funding its own subsidiary within the
tortilla industry. As a whole, Mexico’s economy was still performing relatively well and wages,
particularly urban wages, outpaced the increases in tortilla prices. In large part, this was because
of more oil deposits discovered in the country and the foreign loans easily extended from the
“petro-dollars.” With the exception of some years during the mid-1970s, because of the first
40
Ibid.
182‐184.
41
Ibid.
188.
42
Appendini
67.
24
major oil crisis in 1973, the actions that Echeverría, López Portillo, and the government took
during the 1970s and much of the 1980s, combined with a growing economy, kept prices down.
Drops in the international price of oil, in 1981 and 1982, were the triggers of a financial
crisis in Mexico that hurt the state’s ability to continue its poorly managed social spending.
Mexico’s huge reliance on oil exports, which Nora Lustig says accounted for more than 70
percent of the country’s exports, and macroeconomic mismanagement, launched the country’s
economy into dramatic contraction.43 By 1982, Mexico could no longer rely on the prospects of
its profitable oil industry and was compelled to default on its foreign loans. The Mexican
government, however, continued to help urban workers by guaranteeing low corn prices in their
efforts to maintain social and political stability amid the economic chaos. Inflation soared after
the onset of the crisis and by the middle of the 1980s, President Miguel de la Madrid (19821988) realized that dismantling the entire structure of CONASUPO and an overall reduction of
state spending were necessary to keep Mexico’s economy somewhat afloat.
Mexico’s 1982 debt crisis did not immediately affect tortilla prices. It was not until after
1985 when prices began meaningfully growing, but the state managed to bring prices down not
long thereafter. This gradual growth in prices occurred because the Mexican government
exercised a gradual dismantling of its companies and subsidiaries in food markets and an overall
measured reduction in the state’s involvement in economic sectors. As Ochoa explained,
“Because of its [CONASUPO’s] unique role as a catch-all social welfare agency, it did not
undergo massive restructuring during the early years of the crisis.”44 Structural adjustments
recommendations from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to stabilize the country’s
43
Nora
Lustig,
“Life
is
not
Easy:
Mexico’s
Quest
for
Stability
and
Growth,”
Journal
of
Economic
Perspectives
(volume
15,
number
1,
Winter
2001),
86.
44
Ochoa
207.
25
economy were followed, however. By the end of the crisis, Mexico adopted neoliberal economic
policies and revised its policies concerning food security. The fact that the state’s reduced
presence from economic sectors was deliberately gradual, with some spikes, in wage-corrected
tortilla prices can be seen in Figure 3.
Immediately following the country’s economic problems, the PRI had to make
adjustments to save the Mexican economy, even at the expense of alienating their traditional
political coalitions with urban middle class constituents. De La Madrid began eliminating
several subsidies and price supports, and privatizing government-owned operations, which did
not please many constituents. The state also made other unpopular gestures to liberalize the
country’s economy, an example being Mexico joining the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT) in 1986.45 The De La Madrid administration also sponsored reductions in the
guaranteed prices of corn, which the state’s previous policies had protected Mexican growers
from. Although protests did occur in the countryside, because of the state’s decision to buy
cheaper corn from international markets, the PRI’s political legitimacy in Mexican cities was
somewhat secure by its continuance of providing relatively cheap foods to urban constituents.46
By the 1980s, however, it was clear that although tortilla prices were somewhat protected in
cities, there was a growing dissatisfaction with the PRI’s history of poor governance and the
economy’s shift towards neoliberal policies.
This growing discontent amongst Mexicans against the PRI sewed the seeds for what
would become dramatic political change in the near future. As Haber et al. described, starting in
1982, when the President Lopez Portillo expropriated the country’s banking industry, the PRI
45
Stephen
Haber
et
al.,
Mexico
Since
1980
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press,
2008),
69.
46
Ochoa
207.
26
47
was gradually losing much of its traditional political alliances with Mexico’s business class.
The party’s late and mismanaged response to the massive earthquake that hit Mexico City in
1985 also helped generate urban distaste for the regime and mobilize certain sectors of civic
society. Civic groups, such as Asemblea de Barrios (Assembly of Neighborhoods), came about
to help people in Mexico City, who were left homeless, with little government aid, after the
earthquake.48 Furthermore, in response to electoral fraud at the municipal and state levels during
1985 and 1986, helped mobilize groups, such as the Mexican Academy of Human Rights, to
oversee future elections and demand more transparency in governmental actions.49 In
Chihuahua, the Roman Catholic Church, which historically had a relatively tenuous relationship
with the PRI, began to openly show support for the their largest opposition, the Partido Acción
Nacional (hereafter PAN; National Action Party), because of electoral fraud during the late1980s.50 Miscalculated responses to economic crises, mismanagement of natural disasters and
electoral wrongdoings, collectively birthed a mounting distrust of the PRI from its historically
aligned coalitions that even a history of cheap foods could not appease.
In 1988, Carlos Salinas de Gotari was elected president in a tight and arguably fraudulent
election, which only highlighted a growing the public’s favor of the PRI. However, the shift
towards neoliberalism and what Salinas de Gotari called modernization did not slow. In 1989
Salinas liberalized many restrictions on foreign direct investment in Mexico as an attempt to
invite foreign investors to the country.51 As another symbol of government deregulation and
neoliberal policies, Salinas reformed Article 27 of the Mexican constitution and allowed the
47
Haber
et
al.
129‐130.
48
Judith
Adler
Hellman,
Mexican
Lives
(New
York:
The
New
Press,
1994),
19.
49
Haber
et
al.
144.
50
Ibid.
143.
51
Ibid.
73.
27
52
privatization of ejidos after 1992. This action symbolized the end of decades of government
sponsored, although inconsistently enforced, land reform, which also was a symbol of an
abandonment of one of the country’s major revolutionary ideals.
Before the end of the same year, President Salinas began what became the complete
dismantling of the SFA, and liquidating many of its subsidiaries, and created a new social
welfare arm of the state with a deliberately smaller role in economic, particularly agricultural,
sectors. PRONASOL (Programa Nacional de Solidaridad [National Solidarity Program]), the
state’s new agency began eliminating price subsidies and instead gave the product away to 3.2
million families who earned less than minimum wages.53 This was obviously an effective effort
to rid the government of indiscriminate social provisioning by helping the groups that needed the
most help, which fell in-line with his “social liberalism” doctrine. Efforts such as these,
however, also removed the state from a long-term role of being the provider of expected help to
corn producers and tortilla companies. While attempts to ease the transition into new economic
models were made and the country’s poorest people were provided with state aid, the PRI’s
traditional privileged constituents in urban centers were largely ignored.
For the tortilla industry, the moves towards a more open economy and privatization of
many of the SFA subsidiaries became a greater concentration of the tortilla milling industry, in a
single company’s control. During the Salinas administration, in what was regarded as a corrupt
business deal, all subsidized corn sales from the state’s distribution agency were shifted to the
Maseca-Gruma company, which was owned by long-time Salinas’s family friend Roberto
Gonzalez Barrera (Gonzalez would later provide Salinas with a private jet to flee Mexico after
his brother, Raul, was indicted for murder). Consequently, small nixtamaleros (old-fashioned
52
Castillo
1.
53
Ochoa
212.
tortilla millers or makers) were forced to purchase corn at market prices while Maseca was
28
privileged to buy its corn at lower subsidized prices. With the deal, Barrera, known as the “King
of the Tortilla,” acquired 52 percent of Mexico’s national tortilla market and a disproportionate
amount of influence on tortilla prices.54 The deal, however, was a symbol of the large economic
shifts that the country was experiencing during the first half of the 1990s.
During the early-1990s, Mexico’s economy and its people continued their transition. By
1991, more limitations on foreign investment in the country had been reformed as an attempt to
further open the economy. State-owned enterprises, such as steel plants, airlines, and telephone
monopoly, were privatized during by the 1990s.55 In 1994, in further attempts to entrench the
country’s economy in global capitalism and neoliberal aligned policies, Mexico signed the
NAFTA with Canada and the United States. Between 1992 and early 1993, Mexico negotiated
the agreement with its North American partners. One of the sticking points during the
negotiations was the inclusion of corn in the agreement. While the U.S. wanted to export their
corn, which was up to 40 percent cheaper to produce and coming from a place where that had
key comparative and competitive advantages, such as good land, know-how, capital, and
government-sponsored subsidies. They also were concerned about subjecting corn producers in
Mexico to compete with subsidized farmers from the U.S., who produced corn more efficiently
and on larger scales. The NAFTA did, in fact, include corn in the treaty (the U.S. would not
have passed the it otherwise), which meant imports of cheaper corn. At the same time, however,
a single tortilla company, MASECA, expanded its control of the tortilla market and potentially
eroded the ability to translate the savings from cheaper corn to the public.
54
John
Ross,
“Tortilla
Wars,”
The
Progressive
(June
1999),
34‐35.
55
Haber
et
al.
73‐74.
Access to Tortillas, 1995-2008
The final period of wage-corrected tortilla prices was characterized by steady and
29
consistent increases, as Figure 3 shows. However, it should be noted that these increases were
not historically exceptional. In fact, 2008 levels were seen throughout the 1940s and years in the
1950s. Gradual increases in prices could be attributed to Mexico’s further entrenchment in
neoliberal economic policies, participation in free trade agreements, and political changes
throughout the period. Wages did grow throughout the period, but tortilla prices outpaced the
increases. Consequently, the gap between prices and wages increasingly expanded after 2000
(Figure 6). In essence, workers earning a manufacturing wage were able to afford less and less
tortillas, which, particularly for urban residents, are how they judge the price of corn. Moreover,
tortilla prices rose higher than 1973 oil crisis levels, and the trend in prices occurred for more
than a decade with prospects for consumer relief appearing bleak.
Figure 6 National daily manufacturing wages and Mexico City tortilla prices, 1995-2008
Sources. Banco de México.
Notes. Wages measured in pesos per day. Tortilla prices measured in pesos per kilogram.
Mexican economist Alejandro Nadal explains, the inclusion corn in the NAFTA was the
product of a “shortsighted approach,” particularly because of what it would do to Mexicans.56
56
Alejandro
Nadal,
“Corn
and
NAFTA:
An
Unhappy
Alliance”
Seedling
(June
2000),
2.
30
While cheaper corn would theoretically be more available to consumers, the inclusion of corn in
the agreement would also potentially put Mexican consumers at the mercy of global prices of
corn, which could increase to levels unheard of in Mexico. As Figure 3 shows, prices started a
gradual but steady climb after 1994, when the agreement was ratified. It should also be noted
that prices did not immediately skyrocket after the adoption of the NAFTA.
More detrimental for urban Mexican consumers was the complete removal of tortilla
subsidies for consumers in 1998, by President Ernesto Zedillo. This decision was done at a time
when, according to studies at Mexico’s National Nutrition Institute, thirteen million children
received 80 percent of their caloric intake from tortillas.57 The prices of corn and tortillas rose
substantially, with the price of corn increasing 127 percent from 1997 to 1999 and another 22
percent from 2000 to 2002.58 Determining how much these increases were related to
international prices, or market conditions in the tortilla industry, or the abolishment of subsidies,
would be a worthwhile examination. What mattered, however, was that prices increased quite
notably and consumers showed angst in reaction to the proliferation of prices. Later, according
to Appendini, the prices grew more than 75 percent between 2006 and 2007. Mexico’s postNAFTA corn situation has also stemmed into affecting the country’s farmers, with many corn
farmers losing motivations to continue their occupations, and instead move to urban centers and
migrate to the U.S. for employment.59 Mexico’s participation in the NAFTA and the
57
Ross
35.
58
William
Coyle
and
Steven
Zahniser,
“U.S.‐Mexico
Corn
Trade
During
the
NAFTA
Era:
New
Twists
to
an
Old
Story”
Electronic
Outlook
Report
from
the
Economic
Research
Service,
published
by
the
United
States
Department
of
Agriculture,
(May
2004),
www.era.usda.gov.
59
Appendini
67‐69.
31
government’s advances in liberalizing the country’s economy have been part of what has been
called a “sloppy” process.60
Mexico’s decision to participate in a large free trade agreement and abandon its historical
subsides for corn were grounded in fiscal responsibilities and, more importantly, politics.
According to Roy Boyd and Khosrow Doroodian, Mexico’s decisions to remove many of the
subsidies, particularly for corn, would be “relatively painless.” Both Boyd and Doroodian also
said that while Mexican consumers would initially not be better off with the dropping of the
subsidies, the state’s increase in income could be “targeted to displaced workers as well as the
working poor who face inflationary pressures due to rising food costs.”61 This logic, however,
became problematic when prices of corn derivatives, specifically tortillas, consequently grew,
and the state did not find effective methods for managing their newfound resources to curtail
rising prices. As mentioned, politics were also involved in the decision to include corn in the
NAFTA. The U.S. demanded that corn be included as one of the products that would be
scheduled to become freely traded, without this provision, the deal potentially would have not
been completed. So, in Mexico’s attempt to secure a large economic trade agreement with its
economically powerful neighbor, politics were the more important factor for corn being included
in the deal, along with fiscal considerations.
Efforts to relieve consumers from growing prices were made during this last period,
though. As mentioned, President Salinas subsidized, more specifically distributed, tortillas for
many targeted groups around the country. Also, in 1999, when President Ernesto Zedillo (2000
60
Fernando
Barceinas
and
Antonio
Yunez
Naude,
“Efectos
de
la
desaparición
de
la
CONASUPO
en
el
comercio
y
en
los
precios
de
los
cultivos
básicos,”
Estudios
Económicos,
El
Colegio
de
México,
Centro
de
Estudios
Económicos,
volume
15,
number
2
(2000),
223.
61
Doroodian, Khosrow and Roy Boyd, “The Impact of Removing Corn Subsidies in Mexico: A
General Equilibrium Assessment,” Atlantic Economic Journal, volume 27, number 2 (June 1,
1999): 164.
2006) ended the government’s twenty-five year period of tortilla subsidies, the government
32
signed agreements with tortilla companies to avoid price gouging and price ceilings.62 Later, in
2007, newly elected President Felipe Calderón made efforts to stabilize tortilla prices by signing
the Acuerdo para Estabilizar el Precios de la Tortilla [Agreement to Stabilize the Price of
Tortillas] as a response to consumer demands. At the signing of the agreement Calderón said
that the pact was made to “protect the pockets of Mexican families.”63 Despite the state efforts
to help consumers, though, Mexicans continued to see prices rise. Furthermore, prices increased
during a time in which the regimes were reluctant to involve themselves in markets and the PRI
no longer had the power to intervene in economic sectors to appease its privileged constituents.
Mexican consumers’ difficulties also were compounded with the fact corn became a
freely traded commodity, in accordance with the gradual 14-year phasing out of tariffs on the
grain, after 2008. Pegged with the end of subsidies, tortilla prices were now effectively pegged
to global prices. This was problematic for consumers because the global price of corn increased
with the demand for alternative energy sources, such as corn-based ethanol. After 2008, the
prospect of rising tortilla costs, because of the significant influence of global markets, gradually
became a reality that consumers have had to face. Furthermore, potential consumer relief, such
as the return of tortilla or corn subsidies and/or renegotiating the NAFTA, can be considered
anathema to the laissez faire-leaning Calderón and his PAN party.
The third and final trend of tortilla prices in Mexico City was characterized by steady and
unrelenting increases that have been met with recent popular unrest. Tortilla prices obviously
62
John
Ward
Anderson,
“Tortilla
Price
Hike
Hits
Mexico’s
Poorest,”
The
Washington
Post,
Foreign
Service,
January
12,
1999,
A11,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp‐
srv/inatl/longterm/mexico/stories/990112.htm.
63
Presidencia
de
la
República
[Office
of
the
Presidency
of
the
Republic],
“El
Presidente
Calderón
el
la
Firma
del
Acuerdo
para
Estabilizar
el
Precio
de
la
Tortilla,”
January
18,
2007,
http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/buscador/index.php?contenido=28666.
33
increased over the period and prospects concerning prices continue to point upward. However,
as mentioned, the 2008 level of wage-corrected tortilla prices, which is the apex of this period’s
prices, are not exceptional and high prices were seen in the 1940s and 1950s. Public
demonstrations and other expressions of concern were far less common and vocal prior to the
last two decades, and they were also concentrated in the countryside, however.64 In part, this has
been because the Mexican government’s decision to adopt new macroeconomic policies and
dedication to refrain from market interventions has taken priority over providing cheap food to
its population. Whereas the PRI had vested interests in maintaining inexpensive basic
foodstuffs, since 1982 and after the PRI’s ousting from the presidency in 2000, the government
has been reluctant to involve itself in economic sectors.
In large part, the recent protests concerning prices could be attributed to the gradual
changes in Mexican politics that started years ago. As mentioned, starting in the 1960s after the
Tlaltelelco incident and after other events, such as the earthquake response in 1986, and
culminating with the election of the PAN in 2000, Mexican politics became more open and a
more civic society emerged throughout the country. The number of grass-roots level groups,
such as Asemblea de Barrios, grew in urban areas, and have become important political
constituencies. Groups other than urban middle-class workers have been able to garner the
attention of political regimes, and have found causes, such as high tortilla prices, to make
political parties compete and jockey to satisfy their appeals. Historical political coalitions in
Mexico have changed and continue to change. Furthermore, rising tortilla prices during this last
period have been a powerful cause for the re-crafting of urban political coalitions in the country.
64
Ochoa
171,
178,
210.
34
How politics may have been a more significant factor related to protests will further discussed in
Chapter 3.
Conclusions
The evolution of wage-corrected tortilla prices in Mexico’s Federal District and Mexico
City from 1940 to 2008 does not provide the entire modern history of corn in the country, but it
does offer strong conclusions concerning affordability of corn. More specifically, the evolution
of prices offers strong conclusions that can be made concerning access to corn and tortillas, and
consumer affordability in what is considered the country’s most important city. The first
conclusion that can be inferred by the index is that there were three distinct periods of tortilla
prices in Mexico, and that the recent trend of rising prices was not exceptional in the last four
decades. Second, tortilla prices followed historical political decisions by the PRI to privilege
certain populations. Consequently, Mexico’s turn to neoliberalism entailed a significant
reduction of the state’s intervention in markets and had significant effects on the affordability of
tortillas for many groups. Finally, casting neoliberalism as the only overarching reason for rising
prices would be inaccurate; political dynamics in Mexico must be considered when looking at
prices and the urban unrest.
As mentioned, the first conclusion that can be drawn from the index of wage-corrected
tortilla prices is that there were three distinct periods of prices. During the first period, prices
dramatically decreased for more than three decades. In the second period (1973-1994) tortilla
prices seemed to have bottomed out and had no trend. Mexicans’ purchasing power grew at
times and shrank in this period, which coincided with at times when the country’s economy was
relatively strong and went through significant contractions. The third period of prices (19952008) was a gradual yet steady increase that corresponded with the adoption of new economic
35
policies and changes in political policies and agendas throughout the period. Collectively, the
three periods of prices suggest that Mexicans, specifically in Mexico City, have experienced
important changes in tortilla prices over the majority of the twentieth-century, and the early years
into the twenty first-century have not been different.
The second conclusion extending from the index of wage-corrected tortilla prices is that
the trends of Mexico’s tortilla prices have been directly related to political and economic policies
in the country over the given period. During the first period, prices decreased significantly when
Mexico’s economy experienced modest growth. Throughout the period, the PRI was left to
continue appeasing its privileged urban working-class constituents that the regime had inherited
from Cardenismo’s policies. The second period consisted of relatively stable prices, despite
interruptions like the global oil crisis and Mexico’s debt crisis, which coincided with PRI market
interventions in the agricultural sector to maintain political legitimacy and a healthy period of
growth of the country’s economy labeled the “Mexican Miracle.” Tortilla prices during the third
and final period corresponded to political mismanagement of the economy in the 1980s and the
drastic economic changes thereafter, and the political reactions to consumer unrest.
The evolution of tortilla prices in Mexico City also supports the idea that access to corn
and tortillas after 1995 deteriorated significantly. A “typical” working Mexican earning a
manufacturing wage has lost and continues to lose their ability to purchase tortillas. Although
the prices decreased during some years after 1995, the overarching trend has been that a day’s
work has not been able to afford as much corn as years past. Moreover, prices, as of 2008, are
past levels that have not been seen for nearly five decades. As mentioned, the government’s
reluctance to revert to former practices and allowing the market to determine prices, because of
its dedication to being a participant in new economic policies after 1982, have adversely affected
how much corn Mexicans have access to. Essentially, tortillas, which have been part of the
36
Mexican identity for centuries, have increasingly become a commodity that Mexicans in urban
areas are finding more and more difficult to afford.
Finally, the evolution of tortilla prices shows that recent unrest related to tortilla prices in
urban areas has not been entirely due to economic policy reforms. Prices definitely increased
after changes to a more open economy occurred throughout the 1980s and especially after the
1990s. However, the level of prices have been seen before, but were met with less outright
protest than what has occurred recently. Moreover, political parties have tried to respond to
consumers’ situation first with “social liberalism,” then with price ceilings and agreements with
private tortilla corporations and other forms. In essence, despite their commitment to marketoriented reforms, the national administrations have not completely ignored the trend of rising
prices and have made interventions, albeit smaller than previous years, in markets.
As mentioned, the proliferation of popular unrest also could be because the political
landscape in Mexico changed dramatically during recent decades. A more democratic and civic
society emerged over the period and has found causes, such as the gradual rise of tortilla prices,
to express dissatisfaction with their government. With the PRI’s ousting from executive
governance in 2000, the public realized the value of organized action and the magnitude of its
influence on politics. Furthermore, rising tortilla and corn prices have united urban populations
enough that the state has responded in some ways to help consumers. As will be discussed in
Chapters 2 and 3, rural groups have also become galvanized to protest policies on corn
production and trade that were detrimental to their welfare.
CHAPTER II. FROM COMMONPLACE TO CONCERN: CORN IN MEXICO’S RURAL
AREAS, 1934-2008
37
Mexicans living in rural areas, like urban residents, are increasingly vocalizing their
discontent to certain economic and political policies related to corn. People in the rural areas of
Mexico, however, do not have problems affording corn, high tortilla prices, or access to the
grain. This is because they have the ability to attain corn relatively easier than city dwellers.
Their location and, many times, occupational circumstances make producing and accessing corn
relatively less problematic. Yet, over the last two decades, there are significant problems
surrounding corn in the country’s rural areas. These problems are related to social issues,
employment and livelihoods, and environmental worries. Each of the problems surrounding corn
in the country has come about because of political and economic events over the last half of the
twentieth-century and the early part of the twenty-first.
Like urban areas, politics has had important effects on corn agriculture in the countryside.
Throughout much of the PRI’s reign over Mexican politics, from the early 1940s to 2000, the
rural areas of Mexico were what could be called a secondary priority to the regimes. The
primary concern for the PRI was to make sure privileged urban constituents had enough food
security, which ensured the regime maintaining political legitimacy, as discussed in the previous
chapter. Providing campesinos with what they feel are adequate supplies or resources to
maintain their living or earn a profit were lesser worries for the government. Moreover,
providing corn producers with prices for what feel are fair and the resources to compete in
increasingly difficult market conditions were deemed less important than making sure that urban
consumers have cheap basic foods.
38
Undoubtedly, economics over the twentieth and early twenty-first century have had
implications on corn in the countryside. Mexico’s development model immediately after the
Mexican Revolution actually favored and empowered the countryside to an extent, which was
beneficial to corn producers. During the second half of the twentieth-century, Mexico’s
agricultural sector, particularly peasant farming, underwent changes that altered the livelihoods
of millions of producers. By the end of the twentieth-century and since, rural groups have seen
economic factors heavily influence and change their patterns of employment and disrupted social
structures. These macroeconomic frameworks, combined with the political dynamics of the
country, have managed to create distress because they have combined to reduce the biodiversity
of local Mexican corn. In addition, there have been mounting worries in rural Mexico that the
country’s adoption of different economic policies changed corn’s cultural significance, along
with the country’s biodiversity.
Collectively, politics and economics have both been large factors in the modern history of
corn in Mexico’s rural areas. Both factors help explain how over the course of the last eighty
years, policies related to corn have become part of larger discussions, such as political debates,
arguments concerning the sustainability and entitlements that rural farmers are owed to them.
This evolution of corn’s significance and symbolism in the countryside, like in Mexico’s urban
areas, has been dynamic. Also similar to its history in Mexican cities, corn’s narrative in the
countryside has been periodical. Furthermore, in the countryside, the concerns surrounding corn
continue to grow and explain more about the political conscious of Mexicans.
For this chapter, the majority of the sources used to detail the changing history of corn in
Mexico’s countryside were relevant secondary sources. As mentioned, access to corn or tortillas
in Mexico’s countryside, unlike urban areas, historically was not a problem because of corn
39
farmers’ ability to produce for themselves. Hence, a quantitative study of corn prices for farmers
or an examination of rising tortilla prices would not be an appropriate way to explain Mexicans’
discontent related to corn in the countryside. Instead, a number of social, historical, economic
and anthropological studies across different academic areas were collected to narrate the
country’s different agricultural policies, economic models, political influences and other factors
that had effects on the history of corn in Mexico over the last several decades.
Mexico’s Campesinos and Corn, 1934-1940
After the Mexican Revolution (1910-1921) corn production and the country’s food
security as a whole were matters that the state would have to deal with. Outbreaks of violence
during the fighting caused food shortages and products like corn saw its production drop more
than a third from what levels had been during the first decade of the twentieth-century.65 With
the social upheaval of the revolution and the breakdown of the government, politicians thereafter
saw food security as an integral part of the country’s future prospects for stability and peace. An
illustration of how serious food shortages and adequately supplying food was during the
revolution was illustrated in a film produced by the government in 1936. In Vamonos con Pacho
Villa corn is seen being distributed to different towns by Villa’s northern army. Villa, portrayed
as an affable and burly revolutionary hero in the film set during the revolution, has peasants
flocking to his railroad car to receive ears of corn stolen from the rich and government
sympathizers.66 While Vamonos con Pancho Villa was a film production and not confirmed to
65
Enrique
C.
Ochoa.
Feeding
Mexico:
The
Political
Uses
of
Food
since
1910.
(Wilmington,
Delaware:
Scholarly
Resources
Incorporated,
2000),
27.
66
“Getting
to
Villa.”
Let’s
Go
With
Pancho
Villa/Vamonos
con
Pancho
Villa,
DVD.
Directed
by
Fernando
de
Fuentes.
1936,
manufactured
in
the
U.S.A.:
Filmoteca
Unam/Cinemateca‐
Condor
Media,
Incorporated,
2005.
40
be true, the scene emphasized the importance of sufficient food supplies, specifically corn, in he
country.
Almost immediately after the revolution, a newly written constitution provided the state
with mechanisms to intervene in economic sectors to ensure food security. Hence the federal
government studied and attempted to fix supply problems and food prices. Through funding
from the Almacenes Generales de Deposito de Credito Agricola (General Warehouses of
Agricultural Credit), storagehouses for corn and other grains were built throughout the country to
allow producers to sell their products easier. The government also opened offices, such as the
Dirección General de la Economia Rural (General Direction/Director of Rural Economy), to
study harvests and costs of inputs for producers.67 It should be mentioned that the state was only
modestly successful in relieving prices and alleviating producers’ problems. However, what was
important was the precedent set: the government would play a large role in food markets, which
was a practice that continued in the 1930s and beyond.
Between 1934 and 1940, because of principles and beliefs favored by President Lázaro
Cardenas, Mexico’s campesinado (rural groups) became a pillar for the country’s national
development. This meant that groups, such as rural producers, were a favored population and
policies were aimed at helping them. Cardenas believed that Mexico’s established ejido
(communal land) land reform would allow the countryside to provide the country with the food it
needed. Moreover, rural producers would, with significant state assistance, eventually be able
export the agricultural surplus, thus advancing the country’s economic development. With this
67
Ochoa
32‐33.
41
in mind, it was no mistake that Cardenas redistributed more than 20 million hectares (1 hectare
equals 2.47 acres) of the country’s most irrigated land to campesinos.68
Cardenas did not simply distribute land in hopes of gaining popularity with his
campesino constituency; he also invested resources and time into the countryside. Millions of
pesos were spent on irrigating much of the ejidatarios around the country. In addition,
Cardenas’ administration supplied seeds and fertilizers. During Cardenas’ tenure, the amount of
land grown in irrigated zones went from 19 percent to more than 28 percent. Also, the
Secretaría de Agricultura y Fomento (SAF; Secretary of Agriculture and Development) provided
farmers 15,000 kilograms of insecticide and 7.5 million kilograms of seeds to plant beans, wheat,
and corn.69 The SFA (State Food Agency), established by Cardenas in 1937, went as far as
guaranteeing minimum prices to corn producers and making agricultural transportation prices
cheaper to repel the idea of importing corn.70 The establishment of the Ejido Bank in the late1930s provided technical assistance and financial credit to growers. Politically, he was able to
create a corporate tie between campesinos and the state by creating the Confederación Nacional
de Campesinos (CNC [National Campesino Confederation]) in 1938, which provided rural
groups direct and corporate ties to the government.
Cardenismo, the labeled attached to Cardenas’ policies, and the aid its tenets extended
towards rural farmers proved to be detrimental towards small-scale corn producers, however.
Government policies to help guarantee corn prices could not keep pace with market prices and
summarily failed to be remunerative. For example, the SFA’s rural corn price in 1939 stayed the
68
William
C.
Thiesenhusen,
“Mexican
Land
Reform,
1934‐91:
Success
or
Failure?”
Reforming
Mexico’s
Agrarian
Reform,
edited
by
Laura
Randall
(Armonk,
New
York:
M.E.
Sharpe,
Incorporated,
1996):
37.
69
Ochoa
42.
70
Ibid.
55‐57.
42
same as the previous year, which was a reflection of the Agency’s lack of knowledge concerning
producer costs.71 In addition, the state’s efforts to help small producers with transportation cost
were eventually failures because of poor infrastructure to get small-scale farmers products to the
market, and only helped large producers in the country.72 More importantly, as mentioned in the
previous chapter, Cardenas’ institutional building provided the underpinning of the policies to
come. After Cardenas, the state would constantly deal with appeasing their privileged urban
constituents, while also having to deal with the threat of trouble from the countryside.
Corn and the Green Revolution in Mexico’s Countryside, 1940-1981
Mexican agriculture after 1940 operated under what has been called a “bimodal” or “twotiered” system.73 The government did the minimum it had to in order to appease small-scale
rural producers. On the other hand, the state also embraced large-scale commercial agri-business
to supply cheap foodstuffs to urban consumers by providing state-sponsored subsides, fertilizers,
financial credit and an overall economic structure conducive to commercial agriculture.
Mexico’s “two-tiered” agriculture system would create several problems that the state was forced
to deal with throughout this period.
The country was experiencing extensive industrialization for much of the decades prior to
the early-1980s. Key to this industrialization, which would last for more than two decades and
well into the 1970s, was keeping inflation in check and keeping urban wages low by ensuring
71
Ibid.
53.
72
Ibid.
63.
73
Tom
Barry.
Zapata’s
Revenge:
Free
Trade
and
the
Farm
Crisis
in
Mexico
(Boston:
South
End
Press,
1995),
27.
Deborah
Brandt.
Tangled
Routes:
Women,
Work,
and
Globalization
on
the
Tomato
Trail
(New
York:
Rowman
&
Littlefield
Publishers,
Incorporated,
2008),
210‐211.
DeWalt,
Billie
R.
and
Martha
W.
Rees,
with
the
assistance
of
Arthur
D.
Murphy.
The
End
of
Agrarian
Reform
in
Mexico:
Past
Lessons,
Future
Prospects
(USA:
Center
for
U.S.‐Mexican
Studies,
University
of
California,
San
Diego,
1994),
44.
abundant agricultural production. Increasing agricultural production was done through the
43
Banco Nacional de Crédito Ejidal (National Ejido Credit Bank; hereafter BNCE), which
extended public and private loans to farmers, particularly larger farmers on already-irrigated
lands in Northern Mexico, not ejidos and smaller producers in the remainder of the country.
Moreover, these loans were aimed at modernizing farming techniques particularly for wheat and
export crops, not corn because of the lower rates of return.74 Also key to the modernization of
the agricultural sector was changing farmers’ production techniques, which opened the way for
the Green Revolution.
In the early-1940s, the Rockefeller Foundation began agricultural experiments involving
hybrid and fertilizer-responsive seeds in Mexico agriculture, which eventually became labeled as
the Green Revolution. The entire effort was initiated, financed and supervised by the
Rockefeller Foundation. With the idea of increasing agricultural efficiency and increasing, the
Foundation, in conjunction with the Secretaría de Agricultura y Ganadería (SAG; Secretary of
Agriculture and Livestock), promoted fertilizer-responsive, hybrid seed varieties that were
developed in laboratories in the U.S. and Mexico. This was integrated with farm management
routines that centered on the use of biocides and modern machinery.75 By 1946, the Mexican
government, under President Miguel Alemán, had established the Corn Commission to distribute
the first new hybrid corn and wheat seeds to farmers, which were subsequently passed out in
1947 and 1948.76
74
Ochoa
101‐102.
75
David
A.
Sonnenfeld,
“Mexico’s
“Green
Revolution,”
1940‐1980:
Towards
an
Environmental
History.”
Environmental
History
Review
(Winter
1992):
32.
76
Joseph
Cotter.
Troubled
Harvest:
Agronomy
and
Revolution
in
Mexico,
1880­2002
(Westport,
Connecticut:
Praeger
Publishers,
2003):
179.
44
Mexican agriculture was dramatically transformed during the Green Revolution. In
relations to finances, the Mexican government spent 3.3 billion pesos building dams, electricalgeneration facilities, roads and other infrastructure. Between 1930 and 1960, according to David
Sonnenfeld, irrigated lands in Mexico increased almost 50 percent. Tractor usage in the
agricultural industry also increased substantially. Moreover, the amount of rain-fed arable land
grew significantly between 1940-1950. Corn production went from 1.6 million tons in 1940 to
14.1 million tons in 1985. Other crops, such as beans and sorghum, also experienced increases
in production levels immediately after the start of the Green Revolution.77 In sum, Mexico’s
agricultural output (4.6 percent per year) after 1950 and well into the 1970s grew faster than the
population (3.3 percent per year) and the country became agriculturally self-sufficient.78
While the Green Revolution seemed like the blessing that the Mexican state needed to
fuel their urban-led industrialization, there were consequences from the country’s decision to
participate in the undertaking. By the late 1960s many of the contradictions and problems of the
project began to show. Government loans were largely unavailable or difficult to attain for
farmers who were not large landholders. Land ownership and control became concentrated,
which went in the face of Mexican revolutionary ideals and Cárdenas’ legacy of land
redistribution. Workers in the country’s expanding commercial agricultural sector were paid less
than living wages and many supplemented their income by having family members move to
urban centers or the U.S. to earn meager but better wages and remit funds. By 1960, 83 percent
of the country’s farmers could support their families only at a subsistence or infra-subsistence
level.79 Also by 1960, 15 million hectares had been abandoned, suggesting that more and more
77
Sonnenfeld
32‐33.
78
Cotter
233.
79
Sonnenfeld
34‐35.
small rural producers changed their lifestyles and livelihoods to survive, so much that they
45
abandoned their valued lands.80 During the 1960s and through the 1970s, small and medium
sized farmers were, as Kirsten Appendini said, “marginalized and deprived of policy benefits.”81
Environmental problems stemming from the project, such as deforestation, soil contamination,
water shortages, groundwater depletion, insect infestations, topsoil losses, and human deaths
attributed to pesticide use, also started to appear during the 1960s.82
There were two other legacies of the Green Revolution that had tremendous affects on
corn producers in Mexico’s rural areas: the emergence of a large transnational agro-industry and,
as previously mentioned, the use of hybrid seeds. The presence of transnational agro-businesses
in Mexico was not new by the middle of the twentieth-century. However, by the late-1960s and
throughout the 1970s, agro-industry dominated Mexican agriculture. Companies tended to be
dedicated towards the production of export crops, such as strawberries, asparagus, and broccoli,
while less land went into the growing of corn and other staple products. This was primarily
because the prices for these products were heavily regulated to maintain the state’s policy of
supplying cheap foods for urban demands. U.S.-based investment into the Mexican food
processing industry went from $109 million in 1966 to $229 in 1978.83 Moreover, according to
James Cockcroft, 10 percent of U.S. manufacturing investment in Mexico went towards the food
industry, while the profits of the transnational corporations doubled between 1965 and 1975.
Also according to Cockcroft, about 25 corporations, 18 of which were American, monopolized
80
Ibid.
32.
81
Kirsten
Appendini.
“Tracing
the
Maize‐Tortilla
Chain.”
UN
Chronicle
(New
York:
volume
45,
2008),
66.
82
Sonnenfeld
38‐41.
83
Sonnenfeld
36.
certain markets for foods like strawberries and frozen vegetables.84 During the Echeverría
46
sexenio (1970-1976) public-sector investment largely went towards agro-export agriculture
through the granting of exemptions for the importation of foreign farm machinery, providing tax
subsides to large Northern farmers, and promoting cattle ranching. The Revolution indeed
generated profits for market producers, but, as Tom Barry explained, “the 30 percent to 50
percent who [campesinos] existed on the margins of the market were largely ignored,”
throughout the 1960s and 1970s.85
The other major effect for rural corn producers stemming from the Green Revolution was
the introduction of hybrid seeds into Mexican agriculture. While proponents of the Revolution
believed that hybrid seeds would solve worldwide hunger through helping farmers produce
larger, more durable and predictable harvests, many rural farmers were denied the benefits.
Many small farmers were given what were called chahuixtle or impure seeds, and no, or
expensive, adulterated agrochemicals. Many times, state institutions like the BNCE and the
Productora Nacional de Semillas (PRONASE; National Seed Producers) also failed to provide
sound technical advice for using the new seeds, and were accused of giving farmers dictatorial
treatment.86 Other complaints about the hybrid seeds included: shorter stalks that provided less
fodder for livestock, fewer kernels than traditional varieties, and that they made tortillas with bad
taste or texture. Peasants also mentioned that the seeds were less resistant to corn worms,
required unaffordable pesticides to control pests, were sold by untrustworthy urban vendors, and
84
Ibid.
36.
85
Barry
38.
86
Cotter
236.
required a uniform planting time, which made the corn more vulnerable to late frosts than
47
traditional strains.87
By the middle of the 1970s the luster of the Green Revolution began to fade and change
was wanted in rural areas. The project received international criticism for its shortcomings,
which included only helping commercial producers and questionable science. It was also viewed
as an American strategy to spread U.S. economic hegemony and not a genuine altruistic effort.88
In the countryside, rural peasant leaders like Genaro Vásquez and Lucio Cabañas led uprisings
against what they felt was disregard for the predicament of the campesinos.89 Many people felt
the revolution provided few benefits for the peasants who needed the most help and saw the
entire effort as a corrupt institution. However, motivated in large part by urban inflation and
discontent after the Tlaltelelco Massacre in 1968, the government made successful efforts to
quell national discontent.
President Echeverría expanded the State Food Agency in the countryside by increasing
the amount of rural outlets from 43 in 1970 to 920 in 1976.90 The state-paid guaranteed price of
corn was also raised after years of being stagnant.91 Infused with early earnings from massive oil
discoveries, President López Portillo was able to, as he said several times during the early part of
his term (1976-1982), “administer the abundance” of resources and continued state interventions
in markets.92 Early in his term, by creating the Sistema Alimentaria Mexicana (SAM; Mexican
Alimentary System), partnered with the SFA, López Portillo was able to open more rural stores
87
Ibid.
256‐257.
88
Ibid.
263.
89
Ochoa
179.
90
Ibid.
183.
91
Ibid.
186.
92
Nora
Lustig,
Mexico:
The
Remaking
of
an
Economy
(Washington,
D.C.:
Brookings
University
Press,
1998):
20.
48
to help market rural products, expand grain storage units in the countryside, purchase more corn
from campesinos, further raise guaranteed crop prices, and ultimately integrate rural agricultural
producers to the national market.93
While the efforts to curtail rural dissatisfaction for the government and the Green
Revolution were effective to an extent, small corn producers were already too far marginalized.
In the eyes of peasants the government policies directly to the Green Revolution were poorly
enacted and benefits for small peasant farmers were difficult to notice. Proof of the revolution’s
shortcomings and ineffective policies were evident by the fact that by the 1980s, within 20 years
of agricultural self-sufficiency, Mexico was a net importer of corn.94 This signal of
disappointment for producers could have been viewed as a sign of more trouble to come in the
near future. In essence, because of the way policies stemming from the Green Revolution
carried out, the project could be said to have been a failed effort and detrimental to the millions
of peasant farmers.
Corn in the Neoliberal Era, 1981-1994
For rural corn producers, the 1980s began with what appeared to be upbeat prospects and
improvement. Revenues from some of the country’s profitable industries looked as if they
would trickle down to helping rural corn farmers. And, for some years at the outset of this
period, campesino-grown corn benefitted from national short-lived economic growth. The early1980s and first half of the 1990s became a period tremendous adjustment and disappointment,
93
Ochoa
189‐190.
94
Linda
Green,
“What’s
at
Stake?
The
Reform
of
Agrarian
Reform
in
Mexico.”
Reforming
Mexico’s
Agrarian
Reform,
edited
by
Laura
Randall
(Armonk,
New
York:
M.E.
Sharpe,
Incorporated,
1996):
267.
however. Furthermore, by the end of this period, Mexican agriculture was almost entirely
49
different from what it had been during previous periods.
During the latter part of López Portillo’s administration, Mexico made larger discoveries
of oil deposits around the country that, in turn, made the country flush with “petro dollars.” Oil
earnings translated into substantial increases in GDP and were responsible for creating more than
one million jobs in the country.95 With the economy performing quite well in the latter years of
the 1970s and even stronger performance in the early-1980s, López Portillo made attempts to
finally achieve self-sufficiency in food production through further expansions of the SAM. It
was believed that the country’s oil money could be invested towards helping the country’s rural
agricultural providers become more integrated into national markets by improving transport
methods and extending credit for producers in the countryside. And, during the first years of the
SAM’s creation, rural producers did prosper. However, the sharp drop of global oil prices in
1982 brought about large macroeconomic changes in Mexico and the SAM was shutdown in
1982 by newly elected president, Miguel De La Madrid, and replaced with programs that
guaranteed only modest prices for grains and minor infrastructural investments in certain rain-fed
areas around the country.96
As mentioned in the previous chapter, after 1982 Mexico’s economy started a gradual but
permanent shift towards a more open economy. State-run companies and enterprises were
gradually closed, liquidated and privatized. For small-scale producers, the change in the
economy meant a halt to state subsidies, less social provisions and Mexico’s integration into
global agricultural markets. During the middle of the 1980s, the United States, in efforts to
95
Peter
H.
Smith,
“Mexico
since
1946:
Dynamics
of
an
authoritarian
regime,”
Mexico
since
Independence,
Leslie
Bethell,
editor
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press,
1991),
378.
96
Ibid.
385.
expand its agricultural markets, were keen to sell Mexico basic grains, such as corn, at
50
subsidized prices, with low interest rates and long payback schedules.97 While these imports of
basic grains were helpful towards urban residents in Mexico, they were detrimental towards rural
producers because the prices of their commodities were undercut. By the late-1980s, problems
for producers in the countryside were compounded further when 45 percent of the country’s
arable land was dedicated towards corn farming and 40 percent of corn producers depended on
some form of government price supports.98 Furthermore, the guaranteed real prices of products
like corn and bean continually decreased throughout the 1980s.99 Not surprisingly, during the
1980s and early-1990s, many rural agricultural workers found it difficult to support themselves
only through their farming and consequently felt compelled to move to urban areas or immigrate
to the U.S for work.
By the time of Carlos Salinas’ presidency (1988-1994), the state’s role in agricultural
markets was, by design, gradually reduced. In 1991, the Apoyos y Servicios a la
Comercialización Agropecuaria (ASERCA; Support and Services for Commercial Agriculture
and Livestock) was created to ease the removal of guaranteed prices for producers who had been
dependent on them for so many years through the State Food Agency. According to the
ASERCA mission, state subsidies for basic grains would be provided to producers if, and only if,
the producers could show that national prices of the grains were below proven production
costs.100 Implicitly, ASERCA was created to further reduce the state’s social welfare role for
97
Barry
99.
98
Ibid.
103.
99
Ochoa
213.
100 Juan
M.
Rivera,
Scott
Whiteford,
and
Manuel
Chávez,
“Mexican
Agriculture
and
NAFTA‐
Prospects
for
Change,”
NAFTA
and
the
Campesinos:
The
Impact
of
NAFTA
on
Small­Scale
Agricultural
Producers
in
Mexico
and
the
Prospects
for
Change,
Juan
M.
Rivera,
Scott
Whiteford,
and
Manuel
Chávez,
editors
(Chicago:
University
of
Scranton
Press,
2009),
xviii.
51
small farmers and, as Naude and Barceinas explained, start the process of completely removing
the state from supplying guaranteed agricultural prices.101
In 1993, as further gestures on the part of the state’s large efforts to ease the transition to
a more open economy for rural producers and campesinos, President Salinas initiated the
Programa de Apoyo al Campo (PROCAMPO; Program for the Support of Rural
Producers/Residents). PROCAMPO was designed to distribute direct payments to more than 3
million producers around the country to fund and encourage modernization of production and
increased output. In order to help campesinos, who were hurting the most from the state’s
gradual de-escalation of agricultural market intervention, smaller producers received more
government aid than larger producers. Gradually, the payments dispersed to producers would
decrease and be completely phased out. The payments, however, were also set to finish well
before the start of the newly negotiated NAFTA. This was significant because the agreement
had explicit inclusion of diminishing tariff rate quotas (TRQs) for corn imports from the U.S.
into Mexico that would eventually be eliminated completely in 2008, which meant that the state
would no longer provide any meaningful aid towards small corn farmers.102
Like urban tortilla consumers during the same period, the shift to a more open economy
for Mexico’s countryside was measured, but the changes were met with trepidation. Many
campesinos were not in favor of participating in a free trade agreement that included agricultural
products with two of the most economically developed countries in the world. In fact, some
Mexicans some groups, such as the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN; Zapatista
Army of National Liberation), spent 1993 preparing for what became armed insurrections against
the Mexican government’s free trade venture. Other campesinos made their way to Mexico City
101 Naude
and
Barceinas
193.
102 Ibid.
214.
52
103
to stage mass protest against the government’s decisions. Nonetheless, corn’s existence under
the free trade era continued.
Corn and Campesinos during the Free Trade Era and Globalization, 1995-2008
Since 1994, the tensions surrounding corn policies in Mexico’s countryside have
intensified and become realities. Small farmers have seen shrinking profits because of global
competition. Other farmers have felt compelled to leave their lands in order to find other nonagricultural jobs because corn farming produced only subsistence-level incomes. Movements
surrounding corn in Mexico’s countryside have also included environmental damage done to
lands. Free trade and neoliberal economic policies have also been blamed for alterations done to
Mexico’s biodiversity. Collectively, these circumstances have made corn the center of major
debates and arguments throughout the countryside.
During the early years of the NAFTA, which went into effect in 1994, corn was a product
that the Mexican government made real efforts to protect from quickly becoming tariff-free, but
the efforts eventually fell short. According the agreement’s protocol, Mexico was allowed to
import 2.5 million tons of corn from the United States duty free, with the volume of increasing at
annual rate of 3 percent after 1994, until finally reaching 3.67 million tons in 2008. Imports
above the stated quota allowed the government to impose duties that started at 215 percent in
1994. As mentioned, these duties were designed to gradually decrease to zero fourteen years
103 Anthony
DePalma,
“THE
FREE
TRADE
ACCORD:
The
Partners’
Reaction
Mexico
Seem
Jubilant
but
the
Government
in
Canada
Has
Many
Questions;
A
‘Real
Revolution
Stirs
Celebration,”
The
New
York
Times,
World
Section
(November
18,
1993)
<http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/18/world/free‐trade‐accord‐partners‐reaction‐
mexico‐seems‐jubilant‐but‐government‐
canada.html?scp=1&sq=1993%20mexico%20protest%20nafta&st=cse>.
after the agreement was signed.104 These measured precautions were quite necessary for
53
Mexico’s rural producers, but they would not be sufficient enough if the demand for corn
outpaced the levels of tariffs.
According to John Ross, the NAFTA “opened the floodgates to cheap, high-tech corn
from the United States and Canada” to enter and establish a foothold in Mexican markets. In
1998, only four years after the start of the agreement, fourteen millions tons of corn were brought
into Mexico, tripling pre-NAFTA levels. While farmers in the U.S. and Canada work within a
larger, more mechanized and subsidized agri-business industry, most Mexican farmers grow
their corn on plots less than five acres and work by hand, which hampers peasants’ chances to
keep pace with their foreign competitors. Also by 1998, transnational companies like the Cargill
Corporation, the world’s largest privately owned corporation and one of the largest suppliers of
genetically modified grains, made major investments into Mexican markets. Cargill’s profits for
1998 were half a billion dollars on sales of $51 billion – roughly equivalent to Mexico’s entire
federal budget in the late-1990s - and accounted for 40 percent of Mexico’s grain imports and 10
percent of the country’s harvest.105
It should be noted in 1998 the Mexican government began a moratorium on the planting
of transgenic seeds. Because of pressure from different environmental groups around the
country, who feared that possible affects that pollen outflows could have on native tripsacum or
104 Juan
M.
Rivera,
“Multinational
Agribusiness
and
Small
Corn
Producers
in
Rural
Mexico:
New
Alternatives
for
Agricultural
Development,”
NAFTA
and
the
Campesinos:
The
Impact
of
NAFTA
on
Small­Scale
Agricultural
Producers
in
Mexico
and
the
Prospects
for
Change,
Juan
M.
Rivera,
Scott
Whiteford,
and
Manuel
Chávez,
editors
(Chicago:
University
of
Scranton
Press,
2009),
91.
105 John
Ross,
“Tortilla
Wars,”
The
Progressive
(June
1999),
34.
54
106
teocintle (wild corn natives to Mexico). With the increase of U.S. corn exports, which were
said to contain up of 30 percent transgenic corn, groups pressured the government to make
efforts to preempt any possible “contamination.” Also using the argument that Mexico was the
home to large corn biodiversity, the groups were able to successfully lobby the government to
enact the moratorium.107 Of importance in the enactment of the Congress-approved moratorium,
campesinos and other rural groups were not entirely involved in the pressures on the state;
pressure came from science circles and environmentalists. Moreover, worries commonly related
in protests against GM products, such as health uncertainties, were not mentioned – concerns for
the biodiversity seemed to have been the grounds for the imposed moratorium.
Heading into the twenty-first century corn and corn farmers in Mexico continued to
experience changes. Between 1993 and 1999 the real-inflation adjusted market price of corn had
fallen 46.2 percent and Mexican corn prices converged with international prices 12 years earlier
than anticipated.108 By 1999, President Ernesto Zedillo essentially completed the dismantling of
the State Food Agency (known as CONASUPO at the time). Programs like the Programa
Nacional de Solidaridad (PRONASOL [National Solidarity Program]), which helped provide
subsidized corn for millers around the country, saw funds cut. Other programs, such as
Distribuidora e Impulsora Comercial Consasupo (DICONSA; Commercial Distributors and
Transportation for CONASUPO), who truly helped rural producers transport their products from
106 Greg Traxler, Salvador Golday-Avila, José Falck-Zepeda, and José deJesús EspinozaArellano, “Transgenic Cotton in Mexico: Economic and Environmental Impact,” Auburn
University and International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. (La Laguna, Coahuila,
Mexico: No date, volume or number listed.): 4.
107 Angélica
Enciso,
“Exigen
no
levantar
moratoria
a
siembra
de
maíz
transgénico,”
La
Jornada,
December
13,
2003.
108 Alejandro
Nadal,
“Zea
Mays:
Effects
of
Trade
Liberalization
of
Mexico’s
Corn
Sector,”
Greening
the
Americas:
NAFTA’s
Lessons
for
Hemispheric
Trade,
edited
by
Carolyn
L.
Deere
and
Daniel
C.
Esty
(Cambridge,
Massachusetts:
The
MIT
Press,
2002),
149.
55
109
the countryside to marketplace, also saw their demise. Furthermore, as mentioned in Chapter
1, the termination of state subsidies was considered temporary hardships for urban consumers.
For Mexican producers, however, there were no long-term benefits that came along with free
trade agreements combined with the loss of agricultural subsidies.110
The problems with the influx of foreign corn into Mexico extended farther than farmers’
income losses in November 2001. Researchers Ignacio Chapela and David Quist published an
article in Nature, Britain’s most prestigious scientific magazine, which concluded that the
Mexican maize genome on native landraces had been contaminated with introgressed transgenic
DNA. According to the report, maize species in Oaxaca had traceable amounts of genetically
modified (GM) organisms commonly used in industrial agriculture.111 Quist, in a 2003
interview, said that the transgenic corn was thought to have come from farmers planting the
seeds in the fields – seeds sold in food agencies within the region, which were known to have
significant amounts of corn imports from the U.S. – or via wind blown from an industrial maize
plant 60 miles away in Puerto Vallarta.112 Regardless of how the corn was planted or the strains
arrived to Oaxaca, groups quickly expressed concern.
The potential backlash from the idea that transnational seed companies had contaminated
the genetic variability of Mexican corn turned into a public relations scare for the government
109 Naude
and
Barceinas
193,
196.
110 Khosrow Doroodian and Roy Boyd, “The Impact of Removing Corn Subsidies in Mexico: A
General Equilibrium Assessment,” Atlantic Economic Journal volume 27, number 2, (June 1,
1999), 165.
111 David Quist and Ignacio H. Chapela, “Transgenic DNA Introgressed into Traditional Maize,”
Nature, volume 414 (November 29, 2001), 543.
S’ra DeSantis, “Using Free Trade Agreements to Contaminate Indigenous Corn,”
Synthesis/Regeneration (Number 33, Winter 2004), 4.
112 Organic
Consumers
Association,
“More
on
the
Mexican
Corn
Contamination
Crisis,”
Organic
Consumers
Association,
http://www.organicconsumers.org/Corn/052603_ge_corn_mexico.cfm.
and transnational corn importers. Mexico’s government was keen to begin its own testing
56
concerning the findings and exercised restraint by not expanding the country’s moratorium on
transgenic or denounce foreign imports. Meanwhile, immediately after the initial expressed
concerns related to the article, Monsanto, the world’s largest transgenic seed company, launched
a public relations campaign to discredit the article. Monsanto hired Bivings Group, a global
public relations firm, and, using names of what were said to have been fictitious scientists,
argued against the Nature article. Eventually Nature published a partial retraction of the article
(the first time the magazine had taken such an action in more than a century of publishing).113
Not long after 2001, however, Mexico’s Ministry of Environment confirmed that farmers’
varieties in Oaxaca and Puebla had contaminated DNA from GM corn.114
Despite a national moratorium on planting transgenic crop seeds made earlier in 1998 by
the government, the potential damage to Mexico’s corn genetic variability seemed to have started
and many citizens expressed their worry.115 Campesino groups like the Committee of NonGovernment Organizations and En Defensa del Maíz (In Defense of Corn) put forth further
efforts to start a more stringent moratorium on transgenic corn and other grains. They also
protested and appealed to Mexico’s Consultation Group on Agricultural Research to show some
kind of meaningful reaction to what had been confirmed.116 Furthermore, international groups
started to pay attention to what was going on in Mexico in relations to its corn problems. Groups
such as the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, an international cooperation created in
113 Jeffery M. Smith, Seeds of Deception (Iowa: Yes! Books, 2003), 221.
114 News release from The Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration,
“Contaminated Corn and Tainted Tortillas: Genetic Pollution in Mexico’s Centre of Maize
Diversity,” Gene Flow (January 23, 2002), 1.
115 Charles C. Mann, “Has GM Corn ‘Invaded’ Mexico?” Science, volume 295, issue 5560
(March 1, 2002), 1617.
116 Tania Molina Ramírez, “Tainted Tortillas,” New Internationalist (January/February 2003),
19.
conjunction with the NAFTA, published an article explaining how little was known about
57
transgenic corn imports and the affects they have on small-scale producers.117
Another byproduct of free trade on corn was the unanticipated environmental damage in
Mexico that became noticeable after 2001. The economic hardship taken on by Mexican farmers
after the removal of state subsidies and free trade have fell into pressures to do what they have to
in order to maintain output. By 2002, as Alejandro Nadal pointed out, the pressures to produce
drove many farmers to expand their area of cultivation to marginal lands, which resulted in soil
erosion and encroachment on biosphere reserves and other protected lands in the country. And,
for many of Mexico’s poorest farmers, they relied on poor soils, so yields were low and the
potential for crop failure was high.118 Other environmental impacts for farmers who tried to keep
pace with large-scale producers included increases in chemical usage for farming, water
pollution due to run-off, and unsustainable water use for irrigation purposes.119 Environmental
circumstances such as these were common in Mexico prior to the free trade era, but they were
intensified after 2002.
During the Vicente Fox presidency (2000-2006), thousands of farmers began what
became organized protests against the government, and demanded that the state effectively
respond to their growing uneasiness revolving around corn. One of the complaints of the
protestors was that small farmers were not beneficiaries of the NAFTA, with many farmers
going bankrupt trying to compete within increasingly demanding markets, while commercial
117 Commission
for
Environmental
Cooperation
Secretariat
Report,
Key
Findings
and
Recommendations,
“Maize
&
Biodiversity:
The
Effects
of
Transgenic
Maize
in
Mexico”
(2004),
28.
118 Nadal
157.
119 Global
Development
and
Environment
Institute,
Working
Paper
03‐06
by
Frank
Ackerman,
Timothy
A.
Wise,
Kevin
P.
Gallagher,
Luke
Ney,
and
Regina
Flores,
“Free
Trade,
Corn,
and
the
Environment:
Environmental
Impacts
of
US‐Mexico
Corn
Trade
Under
NAFTA,”
(June
2003),
1.
58
companies remained viable competitors in markets. In addition, there were appeals for Mexico
to pressure the U.S. to scale back its farm subsides. Fox’s administration responded by
discussing increases in aid to rural farmers. Javier Usabiaga, Fox’s Agriculture Minister, also
admitted the state’s policy towards the countryside needed an overhaul. However, in 2003, talks
between the protestors and the state ended when Fox said that renegotiating the NAFTA was out
of the question. This was not surprising because of Fox’s political party, Partido Acción
Nacional (PAN; National Action Party), historically leaned towards liberal economic policies.
What was surprising was that the protestors responded to this by warning that they would block
ports and border crossings with the U.S. to prevent corn imports.120
The situation surrounding corn during this final period became more complicated after
2003. The flood of genetically modified corn imports that made their way into genetic strains of
Mexican corn, combined with no signs of slowing down the imports, created questions about
how much the government valued the country’s intimate legacy with corn and its connection to
the country’s culture and history. Many Mexicans felt that the country’s genetic corn variety,
which went back centuries, was being compromised and consequently lost in the name of profits.
Moreover, the millions of the small farmers who were the preservers or “custodians of genetic
diversity” saw their work and skills become unappreciated and ultimately ignored.121
Furthermore, as Appendini explained, when the role of small farmers and the curators of maize
120 BBC
News
World
Edition,
“Mexican
Protests
Against
US
Imports”
(January
31,
2003)
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2715023.stm>.
121 Alejandro
Nadal,
“The
Environmental
&
Social
Impacts
of
Economic
Liberalization
on
Corn
Production
in
Mexico,”
a
study
commissioned
by
Oxfam
GB
and
WWF
International
(September
2000),
5.
59
in Mexico were ignored, rural livelihoods became disrupted, incomes decreased and government
dependence increased.122
In essence, Mexico’s corn problems in rural areas involve more than the unquantifiable
loss of creole corn. The livelihoods of millions of farmers, especially from southern regions in
the country, stood to no lose their occupations that involve the passing down of generations-old
knowledge about maize, because of how easily corn could be imported. Imports, needless to say,
brought down prices of domestic corn because consumers may not be willing to pay higher costs
for criollo (native, authentic) Mexican corn simply because it is native to the country and farmed
by native farmers. Consumers, as will discussed in chapter 3, have been concerned with prices,
and if imported corn could be more efficiently grown and preferred by tortilla companies, then
concerns for domestic farmers will see their symbolic importance decrease as well as demand for
their products. The confluence of livelihoods being lost and decreased incomes for rural corn
farmers had the potential to increase dependence of the state to either help rural groups continue
to farm, via subsidies or marketing strategies helping promote native grown corn, or providing
social welfare for farmers in some form. As appropriately pointed out by scientists and
academics in 2003 and 2004, Mexico’s economic and political policies related to corn in the
countryside had large socio-economic implications for large sectors of the country’s
population.123
122 Appendini
72.
The
argument
that
transnational
agribusiness
would
be
disruptive
to
rural
life
and
limit
rural
opportunities
also
was
explained
by
Gaspar Real Cabello’s, “The
Mexican State and the Agribusiness Model of Development in the Globalisation Era.” The
Australian Journal of Social Issues, volume 38 (February 1, 2003), 137.
123 DeSantis 3.
Appendini 72.
60
After 2004, Mexico’s situations concerning rural displacement and the conservation of
biodiversity became part of larger and established conservation discourses. Farmers’ situations
and the backlash against corn policies in rural areas were no longer isolated cases which only
handfuls of Mexicans worried about. Campesinos’ problems became similar to millions of other
small farmers around the world who were also adjusting to agricultural globalization and
economic liberalization. Mexico’s small corn farmers began fitting the profile of other people
who were marginalized in the name of profits stemming from globalization and transnational
agricultural companies. About Mexico as far back as 1997, renowned conservationist Vandana
Shiva said that imports from agricultural globalization had led to the corporatization of world
agriculture that was allowing for the concentration of global agriculture to be concentrated in the
hands of a few monopolistic companies. Moreover, the globalization of agriculture was leading
to deeper poverty for the poor and global food insecurity. Shiva, in discussing the plight of
Mexican farmers, said, “In 1992 Mexico imported 20 percent of its food. In 1996 it is importing
43 percent. Eating ‘more cheaply’ on imports means not eating at all for the poor in Mexico.
One out of every two peasants is not getting enough to eat, and in the two years since the
introduction of the NAFTA the intake of food has been destroyed by 30 percent.”124 Essentially,
Mexico’s corn matters, seen as far back as the late-1990s by Shiva, no longer revolved around
income, government subsides, and politics; it became part of larger international movements.
Stemming from this larger movement, anxiety about how GM corn and transnational
companies like Monsanto affect Mexican culture and control food sovereignty for its people has
become more common. People worry that when transnational companies “own” or monopolize
124 Vandana
Shiva,
“The
Threat
of
the
Globalization
of
Agriculture,”
provided
by
the
Voluntary
Service
Overseas
(August
26,
1997),
http://www.hartford‐
hwp.com/archives/25a/007.html.
61
the patented rights to the global food production, millions of farmers, who cannot afford to pay
seed companies their fees and royalties, lose the ability to even continue subsistence-level
farming, and the needs of humanity become centralized in a given company or group. Some
Mexicans, such as anthropologist Elena Lazos Chavero, have gone as far as saying that Mexican
farmers’ GM corn situation “should be declared a sign for alarm at the international level that
provokes powerful controversies related to social justice, self-determination and sovereignty.”125
After 2004, groups, such as En Defensa Del Maíz, have appealed to the government for help
using arguments about food sovereignty and respect for indigenous values and knowledge, but
have received little help.
President Calderón’s administration (2006-present), which has dealt with the most
popular unrest over corn, has offered relatively little help to the countryside. To curtail the
proliferation of high tortilla prices in urban areas Calderón made agreements to freeze the prices
of basic foods and oversaw deals with private tortilla millers to control prices. For rural areas,
however, little relief has been offered. In response to massive protests in 2008, Calderón, like
Fox (another PAN president), denied any renegotiating of the NAFTA and refused to alter the
diminishing import tariff rate on corn, which completely disappeared on January 1, 2008. In
addition, complaints by the protestors, who were coalitions involving the CNC, and the
Asociación Nacional de Empresas del Campo (ANEC; National Association of Rural Industries),
about the state’s annual $1.4 billion aid for farmers going towards northern states and
commercial companies, were ignored. One of the only salvos that Calderón offered towards
rural corn farmers was encouraging and helping peasant farmers to form large-scale cooperatives
125 Elena Lazos Chavero, “La Invención de los Transgénicos: ¿Nuevas Relaciones Entre
Naturaleza y Cultura,” Nueva Anthropología, Revista de Ciencias Sociales. Number 68. (2008),
33.
62
126
to compete in food markets. As in previous periods, the countryside has been largely ignored
and their needs are lesser priorities for the regime.
It should be noted that while corn farmers in Mexico’s countryside have been dealing
with the effects of the globalization of agriculture, prospects for campesinos have not gotten as
grave as in other countries. In some countries, specifically India, there have been instances in
which farmers have committed mass suicide after being confronted with debts and demands for
copyright payments for patented seeds provided by transnational biotechnology corporations. As
of recently, however, this has not been the case in Mexico.127 The Mexican government does not
yet honor seed patents from companies like Monsanto or Cargill. Also, as evidenced in recent
ethnographic studies by the Food and Agricultural Organization done in Mexico, many farmers
in the campo (countryside) have a general distrust and reluctance to deal with commercial seed
sellers, which increases the difficulties for formal introductions to transgenic seeds.128
Furthermore, some farmers have shown that they have the ability to still withstand contractions
in their income due to larger macroeconomic shocks that Mexico has experienced after its shift
to a more open model.129 However, as Mexico’s participation in current and future trade
126 James
C.
McKinley
Jr.,
“Mexican
Farmers
Protest
End
of
Corn‐Import
Taxes,”
The
New
York
Times,
World
section
(February
1,
2008),
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/world/americas/01mexico.html>.
127 This
was
said
to
the
author
via
an
email
message
with
Ana
de
Ita,
who
works
for
the
Centro
de
Estudios
para
el
Cambio
en
el
Campo
Mexicano
(Center
of
Studies
for
Change
in
Mexico’s
Countryside).
Ana
de
Ita,
email
message
to
author,
December
15,
2009.
128 Lone B. Badstue, “Identifying the Factors that Influence Small-scale Farmers’ Transaction
Costs in Relation to Seed Acquisition: An ethnographic case study of maize growing
smallholders in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico,” The Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nation (ESA Working Paper Number 04-16, September 2004), 36.
129 Gloria M. Rubio and Isidro Soloaga, “Assessing the Vulnerability of Agricultural Households
to Macroeconomic Shocks: Evidence from Mexico,” Journal of Agriculture and Development
Economics (Volume 1, number 1, 2004), 61.
agreements grows and corporations devise ways to market their seeds to campesinos, the
63
situation could change and the plight of farmers could become grave like other countries.
The final period of corn in Mexico’s countryside has been summarized by anxiety over
corn policies stemming from larger trends in the country’s national economy and politics.
Mexico’s decision to liberalize its agricultural sectors has progressively been detrimental to
farmers in different ways. With the gradual disappearance of state subsides for farmers and the
dismantling of CONASUPO, farmers did see their incomes decrease. Free trade has been
responsible for floods of corn imports, which has displaced the cultivation of authentic Mexican
corn. Farmers have struggled to keep pace with competing in global agricultural markets, which
has created environmental problems and brought about worries about rural displacement. Over
this period, corn has also become part of larger discussions related to the impact of GM
agricultural products, the arguments against the globalization of agricultural products, and other
conservation-related movements. In essence, the problems associated with corn in Mexico’s
countryside have matured and escalated over this final period.
Conclusions
Using a variety of resources to explain the history of corn in Mexico’s countryside offers
three significant conclusions. The first conclusion that can be drawn about corn in rural areas
has been that the history of corn and its producers has had to deal with economic and political
changes to the country that, like tortilla prices in urban areas, have been detrimental to Mexican
corn and its millions of farmers. After the country’s revolution and particularly during
Cardenismo, campesinos were embraced and their success was considered an integral to national
development. Between the 1940s and the 1980s, rural agricultural producers were considered
secondary priorities to the PRI, but did receive infrequent help when their demands were vocal
enough. Throughout the 1990s and into recent years, small-scale farmers have become
64
marginalized and largely ignored because of economic reforms and political policies. During
this final period, problems related to corn, like tortilla prices in cities, became rallying points for
rural groups used to appeal towards the government.
The second conclusion that can be drawn is that, unlike urban areas and past episodes in
rural areas, the Mexican state has largely failed to change its policies and effectively respond to
the problems revolving around corn in recent years. In the cities, when residents rose in large
numbers to protest increasing food prices, particularly after 2000, the government has responded
with meaningful actions. Administrations responded by negotiating deals with private
companies to bring down the price of tortillas or offering price ceilings on foods. Also, when
rural groups made demands for help from the state in the past, the government responded – they
tried to alleviate transportation from the countryside to urban markets or created national trading
networks. Over recent years, however, the state has done little to help rural producers or respond
to the countryside’s complaints. Mentions of renegotiating the NAFTA have been quickly
quashed before discussion, worries about GM corn have been allowed to grow, and the plight of
millions of campesinos has worsened.
Finally, from the countryside further signs of the emergence of a civic society in Mexico
are further illustrated. In urban areas during the late-1990s, the large political changes that
occurred in politics allowed for groups to show their political influence to parties and demand
change, which culminated with the PRI being ousted from national power. While rural
constituents probably do not garner the same level of political leverage as urban groups, they
have managed to find strategies to make politicians at listen to their complaints and notice their
discontent. By staging massive protests and threatening to block ports and international borders,
65
they have gotten the attention of political regimes. Moreover, they have embraced the fact that
the anxiety over corn policies and its farmers have been interwoven with larger environmental,
conservation, and ethical-related movements. Using the many complaints involving corn, groups
like En Defensa Del Maíz, Greenpeace, the CNC, and ENAC have managed to take their
arguments to large platforms and make appeals towards the state. As will be detailed in the next
chapter, the convergence of rural and urban groups uniting around corn has become a concern for
the whole country.
66
CHAPTER III. CORN, NEOLIBERALISM AND POPULAR UNREST IN MEXICO, 19932008
As detailed in the previous chapters, the concerns surrounding corn in Mexico has been a
slow but steady process. In cities, affordability of tortillas, the most important byproduct of corn
for consumption, has created a source of contention between urban consumers and the
government concerning access to tortillas created by economic and political dynamics. All the
while, there has been mounting anxiety over corn in the countryside – also largely created by
economic and political factors – concerning livelihoods, the environment, costs, and cultural
aspects. Over the past three decades, both the cities and countryside have increasingly
witnessed, and continue to witness, different problems with corn in some shape or form.
No longer are the arguments concerning corn policies entirely isolated problems limited
to urban or rural areas, however. The combination of difficulties related to corn in cities and in
the countryside has created what can be called a national problem. This is not to say that urban
and rural groups ever gathered to start a national campaign of some sort, or that both groups
created political platforms with corn policies as one of their central platform. Instead, what has
occurred have been more and more protests in cities over certain policies related corn and
tortillas as focal points that have had to be addressed. Over the same period, rural populations
have also mounted increasing numbers of protests with other matters related to corn. The
confluence of the protests from both areas and the growing magnitude of the protests have
managed to converge. In 2007, the two protests from both populations converged, albeit
momentarily, and Mexico witnessed how its citizenry could be mobilized, with corn and tortilla
policies, as vehicles to protest larger economic and political frameworks.
67
Mexico’s modern conflicts involving corn policies can be chronicled through examining
the protests in the country over the last three decades. Analyzing the many protests answers
several questions. When did the protests start? What are the appeals that people are making?
Are all Mexicans concerned over corn? Where have the demonstrations been? Are the protests
organized? What have been responses to the many marches and other forms of demonstration
and from whom? Have the protests changed over time? Ultimately, examining the protests
reveal how local and isolated worries involving corn gathered enough momentum and supporters
to become part of a national controversy that the country has had, and continues, to deal with.
Sources
A variety of sources were collected to analyze and chronicle the many protests in Mexico
in which corn, in one form or another, seems to be at the center of. The collection of sources
used included newspaper articles and publications from Mexico, newspaper articles from the
United States, and even other countries. In addition to these sources, there were relevant
secondary sources that helped in this research. Collectively, each of the sources allowed a
historical examination of the protests throughout Mexico that have occurred over the last several
years. Moreover, the sources offer insight into larger economic and political discourses in
Mexico over the last three decades.
Most of the material used to examine Mexico’s protests came from major newspapers in
the country, with a majority of material derived from the Reforma newspaper. Based out of
Mexico City, Reforma has been a news provider to the country since 1922. According to its
website, the newspaper started as a local newspaper in Monterrey titled El Sol. Throughout the
twentieth century, El Sol changed its name to El Norte and, in 1993, the newspaper became
68
130
131
named Reforma. In recent years the paper has been labeled a conservative media outlet.
With a readership of more than 276,000, Reforma has been considered a respected national
newspaper in Mexico.132 Because Reforma had, by far, the most accessible and consistent
archive of articles available, along with the fact that the newspaper has a reputation for good
political coverage and is a national publication, it was utilized for this research.
There were other newspaper sources from Mexico I utilized for this research: El
Universal, also a national publication with a large readership in Mexico; and, La Jornada, a
leftist newspaper with a national distribution. As mentioned, Reforma provided me with the
majority of articles used, but these two newspapers did provide some relevant material and
supplementary articles to contrast the information from the major source. While more articles
from these and other Mexican sources would have been welcomed, the availability of consistent
and relevant stories and articles was quite limited within their online archives and libraries in the
region. Nevertheless, these sources still provided important contributions to chronicling and
examining the variety of protests that Mexicans are having related to economic and political
policies that effect policies related to corn.
Other sources from outside of Mexico that also helped write this chapter. The Washington
Post and BBC News, American and British news companies, respectively, both provided
pertinent supplementary material for this chapter. Secondary sources, such as Tom Barry’s
130 Reforma.com,
“Quiénes
somos,”
http://www.reforma.com/.
131 Mirka
J.
Negroni,
“From
Movement
Demands
to
Legislation:
Organizing
in
the
LBGT
Community
in
Mexico
City,”
Journal
of
Gay
&
Lesbian
Social
Services
(volume
16,
number
3/4,
2004),
213.
S.
Lynne
Walker,
“Favorite
in
Mexican
presidential
race
battles
against
pollsters,”
The
San
Diego
Union­Tribune,
November
30,
2005,
http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051130/news_1n30mexico1.html.
132 José
Pérez‐Espino,
“La
prensa
en
México:
la
transparencia
no
llega,”
Pulso
del
periodismo,
August
9,
2002,
http://www.pulso.org/Espanol/Nuevos/transparencia%20prensa020809.html.
Zapata’s Revenge and Jonathan Fox’s Accountability Politics helped provide analysis and
69
research concerning present day corn politics. Collectively, all sources provided ample
information and analysis to explain how corn evolved from common grain to major concern
throughout Mexico over the last three decades.
A History of Protests Related to Corn Policies in Modern Mexico
Mexico has had a history of protests concerning food security over the course of its
modern history, which will be considered after the country’s revolution from 1910 to 1921.
Similar to the protests to discussed at length in this chapter, popular protests before 1993 were
about some of the same complaints that protestors mention today. Some of the issues involving
corn were complaints over high prices, supplying enough corn for the country, producers
complaining about what they feel are entitlements that they have not received from the
government, and, as mentioned in the previous chapter, protection from global market conditions
for the country’s producers. In sum, protests in Mexico involving corn have not been unique
occurrences that have only occurred over the last three decades. There is a modern history of
urban and rural groups expressing demonstrations in the country in which some aspect related to
corn has been protested.
Since the end of the country’s revolution, protests in Mexican cities involving policies
related to food have largely concerned prices. As detailed throughout the first chapter, urban
residents tended to remain at bay, so long as prices for basic foods were affordable. The idea of
supplying cheap food to city residents was regarded so highly that the PRI (Partido
Revolucionario Institucional; Institutional Revolutionary Party) had policies in place throughout
their reign (1934-2000) that guaranteed cheap foods, especially corn, to appease urban
constituents. There were, however, episodes during which urban consumers expressed their
70
discontent about food prices. During the early years of Lázaro Cardenas’ tenure (1934-1940),
rising food costs spurred groups like the CTM (Confederación de Trabajadores Méxicanos;
Confederation of Mexican Workers) organized strikes against urban merchants. CTM’s
leadership felt that merchant middlemen were hoarding grains to force price increases, and went
as far as labeling merchants as “ruthless speculators” and appealed to the government to import
grains to flood the market, thus lowering prices.133 During the long period of low urban prices
(1950s to early 1980s) we know of no protest related to corn, but decades later, in 1989, urban
groups protested President Carlos Salinas’ downsizing and restructuring of the country’s State
Food Agency, which was responsible for providing with urban residents foods at subsidized
prices, especially corn. Protests against the removal of subsides went so far that many women
stormed the offices of the Agency to express their concern.134 It would be an exaggeration to say
that protests in Mexican cities over the majority of the twentieth century were extremely
common, but they did occur and were addressed.
The frequency of popular unrest concerning policies related to food in Mexico’s rural
areas was quite higher than urban areas over the same period. As mentioned throughout chapter
two, unrest emanating from rural areas concerned a variety of matters: government subsidies to
farmers, costs of inputs for producers, levels of guaranteed prices from the government, and
protection for domestic producers from global markets. In 1956, domestic producers expressed
dissatisfaction with President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines when he approved the decision to import
grains from the U.S. – to bring down urban prices, not by coincidence – instead of waiting for
133 Enrique
C.
Ochoa,
Feeding
Mexico:
The
Political
Uses
of
Food
since
1910
(Wilmington,
Delaware:
A
Scholarly
Resources
Incorporated
Imprint,
2000),
46.
134 Ibid.
210.
the annual harvests to finish and buy from domestic farmers.135 During the 1980s, after
71
government-guaranteed prices to corn producers were slashed to gain economic stability after the
1982 debt crisis, peasant organizations occupied SFA offices and blocked highways to show
their dissatisfaction.136 In 1987, more than 3,000 protestors, led by UELC groups (Unión de
Ejidos ‘Lázaro Cardenas’; Lázaro Cardenas’ Union of Ejidos [communal lands]), blocked an
international highway and peacefully protested the slashing of government subsidies for corn
farmers; fittingly, this protest was labeled the ‘Corn Strike.’137 While there were other
significant popular rural protests in Mexico over its modern history, these were some of the
outstanding examples.
Needless to say, protests in Mexico involving corn, or matters of contention involving the
grain, are not exceptional to recent years. Popular discontent, from both urban and rural
populations, concerning problems related to food and corn has been vocal and noteworthy.
Moreover, there has been a political culture of mobilization in the country. This culture of
mobilization has continued and, more importantly, magnified in recent decades.
Campesinos and Mexico’s Corn Policies in the 1990s
The early 1990s was a period during which many of the protests related to corn began to
emerge. More specifically, signs of Mexicans’ conflicts with corn policies started in the
country’s rural areas. In the early 1990s, however, the instances of protest became far more
frequent and intense than before. At the time, Mexico was emerging out of a decade
135 Ibid.
133.
136 Jonathan
A.
Fox
and
Gustavo
Gordillo,
“Between
State
and
Market:
The
Campesinos’
Quest
for
Autonomy
in
Rural
Mexico,”
in
Mexico’s
Alternative
Political
Futures,
ed.
Wayne
Cornelius,
Judith
Gentleman,
and
Peter
Smith
(La
Jolla,
California:
University
of
California,
San
Diego,
Center
for
U.S.‐Mexican
Studies,
1989),
153.
137 Jonathan
Fox,
Accountability
Politics:
Power
and
Voice
in
Rural
Mexico
(Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press,
2007),
96‐97.
characterized by economic contraction, macroeconomic changes after 1982, and, finally,
72
transition to a newer and more open economy thereafter. It was during these years of transition
that Mexico’s rural population began to express discontent with the many changes occurring
throughout the country. During these protests, agricultural policies related to corn gradually
became common themes and thus began more complaints from the public concerning policies
directly related to corn.
In 1990, President Salinas continued Mexico’s shift to a liberalized economy and lifted
guaranteed prices for all agricultural products, which was not well received by small and
medium-scale producers around the country. The Salinas administration also began reducing
indirect farming subsidies to farmers, such as low-cost agricultural inputs and low-interest credit.
These conditions gave rise to a militant group of farmers, known as the El Barzón movement, in
the state of Jalisco to stage protests against the government because of what they felt was unfair
abandonment by the government.138 Rising interest rates for farmers, combined with dropping
agricultural prices and government cutbacks, made it difficult for small- to middle-scale farmers
to maintain a living and compete against foreign agricultural imports.
On November 23, 1993, the Barzón movement began a large march from Jalisco to
Mexico City. Their chief demand being that the federal government lower farming interest rates
and easing the process of attaining credit; both to help farmers compete with foreign imports of
corn and other products. Atop tractors, with images of the symbol Virgin of Guadalupe attached
to the tractors, the protestors began their march that would culminate with them planting
themselves outside of the Los Pinos presidential office in the capital and wait for an audience
with President Salinas to express their concerns and demands. Although the protest involved a
138 Tom
Barry,
Zapata’s
Revenge:
Free
Trade
and
the
Farm
Crisis
in
Mexico
(Boston,
Massachusetts:
South
End
Press,
1995),
105.
73
small group of participants (100 producers), its leaders promised that the demands and protests to
help farmers would continue to grow. One of the march’s organizers, Maximiano Barbosa
Llamas, warned that farmers from thirteen other states outside of Jalisco would join the march to
the capital. In response to the beginning of the march, the outgoing governor of Jalisco called
the protestors “a minority group” protesting, while the remainder of state campesinos continued
working.139 The governor’s comments suggest that the protest was not taken seriously and that
its participants were small rogue groups who did not represent the grievances of all agricultural
workers. While the governor’s comments may have been accurate at the time, he and the rest of
the country did not realize that protests coming from Mexico’s rural corn farmers were, indeed,
going to become common and grow in size and frequency.
Less than two years later, in 1995, a different small group of farmers from Jalisco
protested to the state. Aldo Burgarin, the spokesman for the protestors and president of the
Federación Estatal de Propetarios Rural (State Federation of State Propietaries), demanded that
the federal government raise the price of corn to be on par with international prices. Moreover,
if the state would not raise the price per ton of corn, Burgarin threatened that the protestors
would takeover government grain warehouses and prevent the sale of the grain. A more notable
part of this protest of loosely organized farmers was that they threatened to join other existing
rural movements, such as El Barzón and the politically known CNC (Confederación Nacional
Campesina; National Peasant Confederation).140 The frequency of protests concerning corn was
at this point quite nascent and loosely organized. However, what became evident at the time was
that rural groups were starting to unify and bring their appeals concerning corn to the
139 Jaime
Barrera,
“Arranca
El
Barzón
marcha
al
D.F.,”
Reforma,
November
23,
1993,
Nacional
section.
140 Jaime
Barrera,
“Exigen
subir
precio
a
maíz,”
Reforma,
April
4,
1995.
government. Also, the protest came at a time soon after President Ernesto Zedillo was
74
compelled to deal with armed peasant militants from Chiapas, who, not by coincidence, took
over government offices on January 1, 1994 - the exact same day the NAFTA (North American
Free Trade Agreement) took effect.
Only one year later, rural groups stepped up their protests. A protest, this time
numbering in the hundreds, led by El Barzón staged a blockade outside of the U.S. consular
office in the city of Guadalajara. Again, the protest was centered on raising the price of corn to
be level with international market prices. The protestors, however, were also demanding that
there be a premium price for white corn, which is the corn commonly used to make tortillas, and
limiting the imports of less-preferred yellow corn generally used for fodder. Shouting the words
“Eat swine! This is white corn, not yellow!” the protestors proceeded to throw grains of corn
and sorghum at the embassy. Furthermore, the protestors demanded that they wanted the price
of corn to be equal to the higher rates established at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the
market exchange where global agricultural process have been determined for some time).
However, such an action, according to the protestors, would involve the Mexican government
asking for permission to do so from the U.S., because the country’s regime was so obsequious to
its powerful neighboring country.141 The protest, which was quelled peacefully, without doubt
showed how complaints about corn farmers’ incomes directly involved corn, even what kinds of
corn are preferred by Mexicans. It was also telling that the demonstrators tied their gripes with
the U.S., perhaps to highlight anti-Yankee sentiment in sympathetic Mexicans and thus gather
followers.
141 Mónica
Alvarez,
“Bloquean
barzonistas
representación
de
EU,”
Reforma,
November
5,
1996,
Nacional
section.
75
In 1999, more rural unrest against the importation of corn into Mexico emerged. The
governor’s home in the state of Chihuahua was invaded by hundreds of protestors on horseback.
They refused to leave until the governor, Patricio Martínez, signed a manifesto, which was to be
delivered to president Ernesto Zedillo a month later, composed by the protestors that forbid
further imports of corn which exceeded the annual tariff free quotas stipulated in the NAFTA.
According to the protestors, imported corn was too abundant and too cheap that it undercut
Mexican farmers because the imports were arriving untaxed and grown far cheaper. Without
hesitation, Governor Martínez promised the protestors that he would support their demands and
take their complaints to the federal government.142 While this demonstration was not a massive
show of discontent, it did illustrate how the concerns about corn in the country were not
restricted to certain states like Jalisco and had moved to northern states like Chihuahua. More
importantly, the protest demonstrated that, although forcibly, rural groups were gaining the
attention and support of politicians for their cause.
By the late-1990s, there was an established history of protests related to corn in Mexico.
The protests, however, were limited to rural areas. Moreover, the protests were never more than
some hundreds of people protesting certain government policies and demanding support for the
plight of small and medium farmers. Yet, as mentioned, the demonstrations became more
frequent, increased in intensity, and by the end of the decade even gained promises from
politicians to take their complaints to the president of the country. While the country’s corn
policies mobilized only relatively small groups, it would soon grow and gain different classes of
participants in the coming years.
142 Javier
Cabrera
and
Carlos
Coria,
“Daña
importación
a
los
campesinos,”
El
Universal,
October
14,
1999.
76
Mexico’s Problems Related to Corn Policies Expands: Urban and Environmental Movements
Throughout the 1990s, small groups of rural farmers in Mexico started the country’s corn
problem centered on very unique and exceptional reasons. By the end of the decade, entirely
different groups of people found reasons for mobilization that involved corn, particularly
environmental groups and urban dwellers. These people, however, were not necessarily
concerned with interest rates, guaranteed product prices, or the price of corn at the Chicago
Mercantile Exchange. Environmentalists in Mexico were concerned about protecting the
country’s corn biodiversity. Urban dwellers began to show concern for the price of tortillas, a
matter they equated with the government’s inability to provide some sort of protection from
international market conditions. These groups began their protests while rural protestors
continued to express their grievances. Combined, the rural and environmental protestors
magnified Mexico’s problems related to corn policies.
In early 1999, speculation began that imports of genetically modified corn would soon
contaminate Mexico’s corn biodiversity. Greenpeace, the internationally known environmental
watchdog, published a report saying that the proliferation of corn imports would eventually alter
the genetic make-up of natural and traditional Mexican corn through cross-pollination.
Moreover, criollo or authentic varieties of Mexican corn, which had been developed and
cultivated by farmers with generations of experience, was at risk of disappearing and the
country’s small farmers would be displaced. This displacement would lead to campesinos
moving into urban areas, increased emigration from the country and general harm to the
environment. While only small groups of people were keen to hear about Greenpeace’s report,
some journalists showed concern. Yolanda Ceballos, a writer for Reforma, expressed her own
opinion about the rumors of the affects of genetically modified corn saying, “For Mexico, the
cultivation of transgenic corn represents an attack against our national culture that can affect the
77
production and further development of teocintle [the species of corn born and first domesticated
in Mexico].”143 At the time, there were no signs of widespread concerns in Mexico about
transgenic corn in the country and its affects, but the topic became an item of discussion in some
circles and had the potential to become a larger argument.
It should be noted that while Mexicans were showing environmental concerns related to
corn in 1999, there were also people in the same year that downplayed the debate. Not long after
a December 8th protest organized and put on by Greenpeace, some Mexicans spoke out against
what they felt was irresponsible reporting and exaggeration. In a letter to a Mexican newspaper,
Dr. Juan Pablo Martínez-Soriano condemned Greenpeace’s protests. Martínez-Soriano
explained how “embarrassing it was for Greenpeace to misinform the public with the objective to
expand its own marketing borders” and wrongfully accuse transnational companies to gain
donations. Furthermore, Martínez-Soriano explained, there was no rigorous scientific evidence
to support their reports.144 What became evident by 1999 was that Mexicans’ disagreements
with policies related to corn were not entirely considered serious and cause for controversy by all
circles in the country. Furthermore, there were differing opinions about how serious (or
irrelevant) the complaints against transgenic products.
Within one year of the Mexican government abolishing its decades-long indiscriminate
tortilla subsidies, urban consumers began to express their discontent, and urban populations, it
could be said by default, became part of the country’s corn problem. In January 2000, articles
started appearing in newspapers detailing the drastic increases in the price of tortillas, only one
year after the tortilla industry was liberalized. According to one article, the price of tortillas went
143 Yolanda
Ceballos,
“Punto
sensible
de
México,”
Reforma,
February
22,
1999,
Negocios
section.
144 Dr.
Juan
Pablo
Martínez‐Soriano,
“Amarillistas,
no
verdes,”
Reforma,
December
12,
1999.
78
from 3.50 pesos to 4 pesos per kilogram in the country’s Federal District, while in other states
the price was as high as 5.50 pesos. These increases, according to the piece, represented a 14.3
percent increase in Mexico City and a 22 percent increase for the remainder of states. Questions
of collusion and corruption amongst tortilla millers began to spread from consumers. In
response to the rumors, Herminio Blanco, the country’s Secretary of Commerce, said that the
price of tortillas was a private sector affair and assured concerning citizens that any findings of
wrongdoing amongst millers would be prosecuted.145
One day after grumblings were expressed about tortilla prices, Blanco announced that a
government investigation would be launched into whether tortilla companies were unjustifiably
increasing the price of tortillas. The investigation was announced in response to labor,
campesino, business, and government groups complaining that increases were unprecedented and
illegal. If companies were found guilty of collusion or corruption, according to Blanco, jail
sentences of 3 to 10 years and economic sanctions were possible. The same article explained the
size of the price increases, between 1999 and 2000, around the country: 25 percent increases in
Mexico City; 50 cent increases in Chihuahua; and more than 20 percent increases in Guanajuato,
Nuevo León, and Durango.146
Within a week of the warnings, the Federal General Attorney’s Office in Fresnillo,
Zacatecas announced sanctions against tortillerías [tortilla factories] for selling tortillas for
unjustifiably high prices. Two companies were temporarily shut down. In response, Manual
López González, president of the state’s Federation of State Corn and Tortilla Industries, said
that prices should not involve government intervention and that the suggested 4.50 pesos price
145 Lilia
González
and
Javier
Cerón,
“Desde
hoy,
tortilla
a
4
kg.
en
el
D.F”
El
Universal,
January
18,
2000.
146 Carlos
Velasco,
Jorge
A.
de
Luna,
Lílíana
Alcántara
y
Corresponsales,
“Hasta
35
por
ciento
subió
la
tortilla
en
estados,”
El
Universal,
January
19,
2000.
was unstable with the costs of inputs for millers.147 While producers defended themselves
79
against the government’s response to alleged price gouging, the Mexican government did show
the wherewithal to help consumers. Moreover, the complaints involving corn from the public
were strong enough that they garnered action from the government.
Complaints about tortilla prices were not involved in later protests on Aurrera University,
during October 2000. Protestors wearing white overalls and masks marched on the university
handing out leaflets about transgenic foods. Greenpeace, the organizer of the demonstration,
accused the country’s three largest tortilla producers in Mexico – Bimbo, Maseca and Minsa – of
selling tortillas that contained transgenic corn without informing the public about how little was
known about possible side effects or transgenic or GM (genetically modified) products. After
Gene Scan, a German research company, confirmed that each of the companies sold products
containing GM corn, Greenpeace denounced the companies for their lack of transparency.
Greenpeace scared enough consumers by their denunciation that many were said to have been
scared and immediately started asking questions about whether other products like meat
contained GM ingredients. Although the protest only garnered a small response from Bimbo, it
was indicative of how the country’s general public was being further introduced to the arguments
about transgenic corn and consequently showing concern.148 The episode also showed protest
organizers were able to garner enough attention that Bimbo felt compelled to deliver some kind
of response.
Soon after Greenpeace’s protest, Mexico’s countryside again showed that their
grievances were far from over. In 2001, a relatively new group of more than 400 people, calling
147 Ángel
Amador
Sánchez,
“Sancionan
tortillerías
por
abuso,”
El
Universal,
January
23,
2000.
148 Daniel
Millán,
“Utilizan
transgénicos
en
tortillas,”
Reforma,
October
12,
2000,
Nacional
section.
80
themselves Frente Nacional para la Defensa de los Productores Agropecuarios (National Front
in Defense of Agricultural and Livestock Producers), disrupted trains from the U.S. After
stopping the trains in the northern border city of Ciudad Juárez, the protestors threw around
intended corn imports and expressed their anger about importing agricultural products that they
could easily grow.149 Less than two years later a group of campesino protestors called Frente
Democrático de Chihuahua (Democratic Front of Chihuahua) disrupted hours of traffic on the
international bridge between the U.S. and Mexico. United under a new banner of protest titled
“El Campo No Aguanta Mas” (“The countryside can stand no more”), the more than 100
farmers blocked the bridge in Juárez to protest over 40 new tariff-free agricultural products
entering the country in accordance with the NAFTA.150 At the time, corn was not one of the
products that lost its import tariff, but the protest would serve as a preview for future protests as
more and more products became entirely freely traded. The two protests, while limited to
northern Mexico, showed that the country’s discords related to corn policies continued to have
rural populations involved, along with environmentalists and urban residents.
Many Mexicans, later in 2001, were shocked and dismayed when University of
California, Berkeley researchers published findings in which they announced finding strains of
genetically modified corn in Oaxacan cornfields. Ignacio Chapela and David Quist’s article,
detailed in chapter two, essentially confirmed to many Mexicans what Greenpeace had been
saying for some time. For months after the publishing of the Nature article, even after the
journal retracted the piece on two occasions, different groups discussed how to react to the
magnitude of Chapela and Quist’s findings. Debate about the validity of the article ended,
149 Marisela
Ortega,
“Obstruyen
puentes
en
Juárez,”
Reforma,
August
15,
2001,
Estados
section.
150 Enrique
Lomas,
“Bloquean
ingreso
de
alimentos,”
Reforma,
January
3,
2003,
Nacional
section.
however, when the presence of transgenic corn was confirmed on April 19, 2002. Exequiel
81
Ezcurra, president of Mexico’s National Ecological Institute, announced that between 8 and 10
percent worth of crops researched in Oaxaca and Puebla had the presence of transgenic strains.
The same day of the announcement, groups began pressuring the government to immediately
start a moratorium on U.S.-derived corn imports, which was where the transgenic corn was
widely believed to have come from. Ezcurra was quoted as saying that protecting the country’s
agricultural origins and national traditions were the responsibility of the government, and at stake
were the government’s “prestige and word” of the government.151 Again, the government was
being pressured to take action for what many people felt was a national travesty. Furthermore,
the government’s legitimacy and integrity were questioned because of very specific policies
related to corn.
The controversy concerning the government’s findings heated up less than a year after
the government’s admission. In an interview on October 10, 2004, Michael Phillips, executive
director of the U.S. Organization of Industrial Biotechnology, made the comment that the
Mexican government should find it “incumbent to step up the process and reach a regulatory
system that allows the country to start and accept these products [genetically modified seeds] and
give the country’s agriculturalists the opportunity to choose” what they would like to grow.
Needless to say, some Mexicans were not amused by Phillips’ advice to the Mexican
government. Journalist Sylvia Ribeiro responded by saying that while biotechnology companies
praise GM seeds for aiding provide basic foods to people all over the world, the companies’
main motivations for supplying agricultural seeds were not altruistic but opportunities for
151 Inder
Bugarin,
“Acepta
Gobierno
mexicano
contaminación
transgénica,”
Reforma,
April
19,
2002,
Cultura
section.
82
152
profit.
Ribeiro’s opinion demonstrated that the larger conflicts in Mexico with corn policies
had a new group of players, multinational companies, which were attracting the ire of many
Mexicans.
The beginning of 2003 witnessed an intensification of protests concerning corn around
the country. Environmentalists were gathering some supporters and people sharing their worries
about transgenic products, specifically corn. In urban areas, citizens were vocalizing their
concern about the price of tortillas. All the while, rural groups continued to demand action from
the government for their plight. Then, on January 27, 2003, a group of more than two dozen
protest groups, including El Barzón, El Campo No Aguanta Mas, informed the federal
government that they were turning down the government’s recent offer to discuss their
grievances. Also in their exclamation was a promise that the groups would take their protest to
Zócalo, in Mexico City for the entire country to see their unity and hear their complaints.153 If
the protestors followed through on the promise, Mexico’s corn problem would no longer be local
and isolated problems; it would be a subject that the country would soon know about.
Mexico’s Corn Problems Spread
On January 31, 2003, more than 50,000 people, made of entirely campesinos, staged a
huge protest throughout Mexico City that culminated with demonstrations on the city’s historical
plaza, the Zócalo. Their chief demand to the Mexican government: renegotiating the NAFTA.154
Of importance in the demanded renegotiations was the scheduled abolition of tariffs on
agricultural products, especially corn (scheduled to be freely traded in 2008). More specifically,
152 Silvia
Ribeiro,
“La
otra
cara,”
La
Jornada,
October
29,
2002,
Política
section.
153 Reforma,
Redacción,
“Rechazan
diálogo,”
Reforma,
January
27,
2003,
Primera
section.
154 Claudia
Salazar,
“Prueban
campesinos
su
fuerza
al
Gobierno,”
Reforma,
January
31,
2003,
Nacional
section.
83
155
the protestors wanted corn and beans to be excluded in traded products in the agreement. The
promises that rural groups had made to the Mexican public had, indeed, been fulfilled. And,
with the fulfillment of the promise, the country witnessed how serious far-reaching policies
related to corn were. Moreover, city residents realized that groups other than themselves had
problems related to corn and, more importantly, corn was embroiled in a rural and urban or
national controversy.
Until the January 2003 protest, demonstrations had been relatively small in size. In fact,
the numbers had never been more than 500 demonstrators. Also, as mentioned, the protests had
been pockets of groups limited to certain locations that had different concerns related to corn.
Groups from the countryside, however, showed their ability to organize and present their
demands on a massive scale. The countryside also displayed their unhappiness in a very public
and symbolic fashion in the Zócalo and in the country’s capital. While their demands were
responded to with rhetoric and their protest did end with little legislation or recourse, it could be
said that the campesino protestors inspired more disruptive overt popular discontent from other
groups concerned with matters related to corn.
An example of a more disruptive method for protest occurred later in 2003. In the port
city of Veracruz Greenpeace protestors chained themselves to the anchor of the Ikan Altamira, a
cargo barge that was reported to leave to the U.S. in order to bring back a large shipment of
transgenic corn to Mexico, reportedly products from bio-technology giant Cargill. The barge
was able to leave the port, but it returned one week later with an escort by the Mexican Navy to
avoid confrontation with demonstrators. The environmentally minded subset of protestors
155 Claudia
Salazar,
“Demandan protección a granos.” Reforma, February 1, 2003, Nacional
section.
84
concerned with corn was now making overt and forceful actions, enough that the national Navy
was compelled to get involved. Aside from their stated problems with transgenic corn, the
protestors began a new attack on GM products, saying that they were harmful to people’s
health.156
A measurement of the public’s opinion towards GM corn was evident in a letter sent to
Reforma during November 2003. In the letter, the author announced that there had been more
findings of transgenic corn in states other than Oaxaca and Puebla, specifically in Chihuahua,
San Luis Potosí, Morelos, Durango, Tlaxcala and Veracruz. The author also denounced the
federal government’s response to the many protests concerning corn. Furthermore, according to
the author, “Corn was the cultural, economic and social base of indigenous peoples, and our
alimentation. However, transgenic corn was in the hands of a few transnationals [companies]
that have made demands to farmers whose crops have been contaminated with their patented
seeds.”157 The letter showed how the country’s corn problem now involved nationalistic, social,
cultural and culinary discourses, along with the ire for transnational seed companies.
The resistance to transgenic corn’s presence in Mexico gathered more momentum
throughout 2004. In Oaxaca, believed the birthplace of corn and the location where GM corn
was first detected, renowned painted, Francisco Toledo led a small protest in support of criollo
corn. As part of his demonstration against transnational companies’ and transgenic corn, Toledo
distributed corn tortillas made from native Oaxacan corn.158 Little more than a month after
Toledo’s participation in the demonstration, La Jornada published an article detailing findings of
research done in the Philippines related to transgenic corn. According to the article, corn
156 Reforma,
Redacción,
“Ingresa
maíz
con
escoita
de
la
Armada,”
Reforma,
September
14,
2003,
Nacional
section.
157 Cartas
a
Reforma,
“Paren
los
transgénicos,”
Reforma,
November
8,
2003.
158 Reforma
newspaper,
“Defienden
maíz,”
Reforma,
March
12,
2004.
85
implanted with the famous Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) bacterium, which was designed to resist
spoiling corn from pests, specifically caterpillars, spread through pollen to neighboring
communities and the incidents of allergic attacks and respiratory complications followed.159 In
the same year, more famous artists joined the protests against transgenic corn. Some of the
country’s more famous political cartoonists and artists, such as Rafael Barajas and Cintia Bolio,
peacefully protested outside of the offices of the PAN (Partido Acción Nacional; National
Action Party). Because the PAN was the largest supporter of a proposed law to allow transgenic
crops into Mexico, protestors marched around the offices with cornstalks and makeshift corncobs
painted in fluorescent colors. Barajas, as a figurative representation of the death of criollo corn,
held up a painting of an ear of corn with skulls representing the grains on the ear (see Figure
1).160 Mexico’s transgenic corn debate was now involved in a movement that popular artists and
the scientific community were joining and openly appealing towards the government to curtail.
Figure 7 Political cartoon representing the death of criollo Mexican corn, by Rafael Barajas.
Source. See text.
159 Angelica
Enciso
L.,
“Descubren
que
transgénicos
provocan
alergias
y
graves
males
respiratorios,”
La
Jornada,
April
21,
2004,
Sociedad
y
Justicia
section.
160 Patricia
Cordero,
“Protestan
moneros
por
transgénicos,”
Reforma,
November
9,
2004,
Cultura
section.
86
In 2005, many Mexicans from different backgrounds attended an exposition in Mexico
City concerning the country’s array of grievances concerning corn. A sign of how much support
rural corn producers was becoming was evident when Rubén Albarrán, vocalist of the famous
music group Café Tacv(u)ba, spoke at the exposition. At the meeting, Albarrán offered vocal
support for Mexican corn campesinos and spoke about the effects transnational companies have
on native farmers. Appropriately, Albarrán said, “Yellow corn is from U.S. producers, who
receive subsidies and tax benefits; this allows them to cover other markets, hurting Mexican
producers.” He also praised NGOs (non-governmental organizations), such as Oxfam, for their
efforts in helping the plight of Mexican farmers.161 By the end of 2005, known figures from
Mexico’s lo popular (Mexico’s popular culture genre) were taking part in the sustainability and
rural entitlement policies related to corn. Essentially, two arms of the country’s larger conflicts
involving corn policies now had the attention and support of popular artists and celebrities.
The topic of tortilla prices, which was the chief concern for the urban groups in
Mexico’s, arose again throughout 2006. Urban complaints around the country became serious
enough that tortilla prices became a talking point Mexico’s presidential election in 2006.
Increasing prices of basic goods in urban areas, particularly tortillas and milk, were considered
important enough that the two prime candidates in the election, Felipe Calderón (a PAN
candidate) and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (a candidate for the Coalición por el Bien de
Todos; Coalition for the Good of Everyone), were compelled to argue about the matter almost
immediately after the election. Calderón was declared the winner of the close election in July,
but by August Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, attacked Calderón for not curtailing
161 El
Universal‐AEE,
“Rubén
Albarrán
hace
?cafe?
con
maíz
nacional,”
El
Siglo
de
Torreón,
November
25,
2005,
Espectaculos
section.
87
urban inflation, a topic he had drilled Calderón about during his election campaign. In his attack,
Obrador made references to urban middle class populations and residents in lower socioeconomic positions, saying inflation “hurts middle class and the most humble classes.”162 As
mentioned in chapter one, with the rise of urban civil awareness, politicians like Obrador, who
was a representative of Mexico’s National Civil Resistance Movement, parties began casting
appeals to given populations over very specific points of contention. Moreover, parties found
themselves crafting their alliances with civically active populations over matters, such as
consumer anxiety over tortilla prices, which could potentially gain political support.
By the end of 2006, Mexico’s many movements related to corn policies had come full
circle. Protests stemming from rural populations, concerned about government aid and
protection from global competition, were numbering in the tens of thousands and growing.
Environmentalists throughout the country had become more active and overt, chaining
themselves to ships and continuing to protest GM corn. Citizens were writing to newspapers to
express their concerns about transgenic corn, and even expressing how the presence of transgenic
corn had cultural, economic and nationalistic implications. Popular artists were even publicly
voicing their protests and concern about different matters related to corn. Finally, tortilla prices
and consequential urban concern about the topic had managed to become part of political debates
and strategy.
Corn Becomes a National Spectacle
After the beginning of 2007, the various arguments concerning corn policies in Mexico
collectively became a national spectacle. Protests related to state policies about corn would
162 Alberto Aguirre, “Arremete AMLO contra panista,” Reforma, November 18, 2006, Nacional
section.
88
increase in magnitude, frequency and significance, after 2007. In Mexican newspapers, matters
that had something to do with corn and/or tortillas became common. Foreign newspapers and
media outlets also noticed Mexico’s corn problems. Also after 2007 and into 2008, signs of
resistance towards the different groups of protestors became more common, reflecting new and
old but heightened opinions about the protests against government policies.
During a press conference on January 13, 2007, the PRD and National Committee of
Citizens in Resistance announced that three days from then there would be a series of protests
around Mexico because of high tortilla prices. Ferrer Galván, leader of the League, announced
that there would be coordinated marches in Chapultepec, Monterrey, Puebla, Morelos and
Jalisco. In addition, Galván and the organizers called for the resignation of Calderón’s national
economic chief, Eduardo Sojo, for his inability to control tortilla prices. A finale of the
coordinated protests would take place on January 24th in the Zócalo. Also announced was a
planned “un dia sin tortilla” (“a day without tortillas”) to take place on February 2nd, in order
boycott tortillerias who were charging what they believed to be unbearable prices.163 In a
symbol of how large and expanding Mexico’s corn problem was becoming, protestors, mainly
from urban areas, had managed to coordinate networks all over the country in order to demand
action from the highest levels of government and even a national day of boycott.
Within a week of the mentioned threats of protests to the administration, President
Calderón signed the Agreement to Stabilize the Price of Tortillas. All circles in Mexico did not
applaud the agreement and criticized protestors who had been involved in the demonstrations,
however. Some people saw the pact, which placed a temporary max price on tortillas, as a
deviation from liberal economic policy and caving in to public opinion. Sergio Sarmiento, in a
163 Claudia
Salazar
and
Alberto
Aguirre,
“Citan
a
marcha
para
16
de
enero,”
Reforma,
January
13,
2007,
Nacional
section.
89
two-day attack on the regime and its choice to draw up the pact were signs that the protestors
were essentially scaring the regime to take unnecessary actions. First, he said that the
government made preemptive decisions to continue the prohibition on planting transgenic corn,
which was the most significant stipulation in the moratorium against transgenic corn, by not
running its own tests concerning transgenic corn. Moreover, according to Sarmiento, Mexico
had lost its scientific pioneering courage it had during the Green Revolution.164 The next day,
Sarmiento called the pact a complete political strategy by Calderón and his administration,
saying that the pact was made to gather popular sentiment at the time, because public opinion of
his effectiveness against the country’s drug trafficking problems had faded. He also suggested
that the pact would, in fact, stabilize prices, which was politically significant in the eyes of
citizens, but that more would needed to be done to get tortilla industry operating efficiently.165
Within a week of the agreement and Sarmiento’s articles, the magnitude of the tortilla
protestors could be seen. For the first time in recent Mexican history, the Unión Nacional de
Trabajadores (UNT; National Worker’s Union), Frente Sindical Méxicano (Mexican Union
Front), and the Congreso del Trabajo (CT; Congress of Labor), united to confront the
government about the prices of basic goods. Historically, the three parties tended to not work
with one another and operate under differing agendas. However, the success of the movement to
change tortilla prices united the groups, who had at least 116 syndicates under their
organizational umbrellas, brought them together to demand that the 8.50 pesos per kilogram cap
on tortillas be reexamined. The groups also announced that they had invited the CTM to join
their protest. In a final threat to the government, the unions announced that if the government
164 Sergio
Sarmiento,
“Revolución
verde,”
Reforma,
January
18,
2007,
Jaque
Mate
section.
165 Sergio
Sarmiento,
“Acuerdo
de
la
tortilla,”
Reforma,
January
19,
2007,
Jaque
Mate
section.
90
did not want more “Oaxacas” or “Atencos,” both scenes of recent massive protest against the
government, “they [government] would have to respond to the general discontent” created by
tortilla prices.166
With threats of a massive protests toward the government abound and political
maneuvering happening, some Mexicans continued to express their worries about the issue of
tortilla prices throughout the country. In a reflection by Mauricio González, the Mexican
government warned that talk of reverting back to government subsidies on corn and tortillas was
like opening an irreversible “Pandora’s box which cost much effort and decades to close.”
González did admit that because global prices of corn were increasing, action would have to be
taken on the part of the state, but indiscriminant subsidies would be unwise. He finishes his
article by saying that the country would see if it could be persuaded by social protests and if the
demonstrations would send the country back towards leftist policies, because for protestors, the
demands were either “subsidies or suicide.”167
As previously planned and well known, Mexicans from all circles walked in protest on
January 31, 2007, in what was the largest show of discontent and concern related to corn.
Throughout the entire day, citizens marched through downtown Mexico City demanding lower
prices on basic food products, specifically tortilla prices, and changes in economic policy. About
75,000 Mexicans, which included trade unionists and farmers, marched through the city holding
signs in protest. One banner read “Calderon stole the elections, and now he’s stealing the
tortillas.” Other people waved around flat corn disks and chanted “Tortillas si, Pan no!” which
was a play on words related to Calderón’s party. Farmers in the crowd expressed their
166 Patricia
Muñoz,
Matilde
Pérez,
Antonio
Castellanos,
Ciro
Pérez,
and
Víctor
Ballinas,
“El
tortillazo
une
a
centrales
obreras
en
torno
a
protestas
y
movilizaciones,”
La
Jornada,
January
23,
2007.
167 Mauricio
González,
“Subsidio
o
suicidio,”
Reforma,
January
31,
2007,
Reflexiones
section.
91
discontent and fear about corn becoming a freely traded item, according to scheduled clauses in
the NAFTA, in less than a year. In a press release during the massive protest, Calderón promised
would clamp down on hoarding and speculation from tortilla and corn retailers.168
The day after the nationally known protest, Reforma published the results of its own
survey concerning the protest. According to the survey: 1 in every 5 Mexicans had reduced their
tortilla consumption because of prices; 63 percent of people surveyed said that tortillas were a
part of their daily diet; 75 percent of the lowest income level said that tortillas were their basic
food.169 In the same edition of Reforma, Obrador was quoted as saying thank you to all the
participants in the demonstration and groups who helped organize it. He also reiterated his
appeals to the government to raise salaries for workers, increase guaranteed prices to domestic
farmers, and rescind the clause in the NAFTA that was scheduled to make corn and beans freely
traded commodities.170 The large protest demonstrated, again, Mexicans’ proclivity to openly
demand action from its government and civically organize on a grand-scale, with government
policies related to corn being utilized as reasons to express discontent and unrest.
Still in the aftermath of the large protest, Enrique Canales wrote a strong opinion
concerning transgenic corn in Mexico. In the article, Canales tells readers that the idea that the
cultivation of genetically modified corn will somehow alter Mexican identity or that transgenic
corn is not as good as native, non-modified corn is an “ideological fantasy.” Canales makes
168 BBC News, “Mexicans stage tortilla protest: Tens of thousands of people have marched
through Mexico City in a protest against the rising price of tortillas,” BBC News, February 1,
2007.
Ioan Grillo, “75,000 Protest Tortilla Price in Mexico,” The Washington Post, February 1, 2007,
World News section.
169 Reforma
newspaper,
“Baja
consumo
1
de
cada
5,”
Reforma,
February
1,
2007,
Encuesta
section.
170 Daniel
Pensamiento,
“Plantea
AMLO
subsidiary
la
tortilla,”
Reforma,
February
1,
2007,
Nacional
section.
92
strong arguments for the use of transgenic corn by praising the production levels of GM corn and
accused radical groups, such as Greenpeace, of creating hysteria in consumers. Moreover,
Canales says that the absolute refusal to grow transgenic corn prevented campesinos from
capitalizing on opportunities to modernize the country’s agricultural sector and its available soil
with new technology. Finally, Canales suggested, cheapening transgenic corn would allow
campesinos and the country to “emerge from the ideological shell of the past that keeps us in its
poverty.”171 The article served as proof that not all Mexicans were in favor of preserving criollo
corn and believed transgenic corn was so much a problem, and, in fact, a solution.
Despite the stabilization plan signed by President Calderón and the continuance of
discussions concerning corn and tortillas in Mexico, tortilla prices quickly rose above the agreed
upon price ceiling. Within three months of the pact, it was reported that the national average
price of tortillas was above the 8.50 pesos per kilogram maximum. In some cities the average
price was far higher than the 8.50 pesos per kilogram price; Mexicali at 11.8 pesos, Hermosillo
at 11.25 pesos, Chetumal at 10 pesos, Cuernavaca at 9.85 pesos and 9.75 pesos in Acapulco.
The pact to stabilize prices, which was not a legally binding agreement between the government
and tortilla companies, was, according to companies, effective at temporarily helping consumers,
but would not last because of international corn prices.172 While threats to protest from
consumers did not follow these findings, the quick rise in prices reflect how temporary and
ineffective the pact was, and how little could be done on the part of the government to help
consumers. Consequently, the proliferation of prices also showed that what could be called
Mexico’s “corn conflict” was not going away in the near future.
171 Enrique
Canales,
“Maíz
ideológico,”
Reforma,
February
15,
2007,
Mexicar
section.
172 Víctor
Osorio
and
Ariadna
García,
“Rebasan
15
estados
tope
para
tortilla,”
Reforma,
April
12,
2007,
Nacional
section.
93
In the middle of 2007, the president of the CNC denounced a deal that would allow for
the collection of native corn varieties for possible preservation in germoplasm banks. Heladio
Ramírez, CNC president and PRI senator, said that a deal made between Monsanto, the world’s
largest biotechnology company, and the National Confederation of Mexican Corn Producers was
an irresponsible act. Ramírez defended corn producers’ right to evolve and adopt new
technologies to help their industries. However, he also added that making a deal with Monsanto
to help with the collection of native seeds was a step towards the introduction of transgenic seeds
that he felt needed more conclusive scientific evidence of their effects. Moreover, the CNC,
which was the umbrella organization of the National Confederation of Mexican Corn Producers,
could not support the deal. In response, Efraín García Bello, president of the National
Confederation, said he doubted the government would offer resources in the effort to collect
native seeds and added that Monsanto was the only respondent to the calls for a meeting
concerning the preservation project.173
This episode offers some insight to the evolving nature of the protests and unrest with
Mexicans’ discord with corn policies. The fact that the two affiliated organizations differed in
opinions is not entirely significant. However, the concept that corn producers were open to the
idea of working with biotechnology companies – albeit because they felt government help was
out of the question – shows that some rural farmers and campesinos may simply be concerned
with keeping their jobs and not necessarily continuing to “save” criollo corn. Moreover, the
incident reveals that larger, politically inclined organizations, such as the CNC, may have been
more concerned with political posturing in the eyes of its constituents, while the actual corn
farmers may simply be worried about being able to make a living. Finally, the episode suggests
173 Eduardo
Portas,
“Defienden
convenio
maicero,”
Reforma,
July
26,
2007,
Nacional
section.
94
that transnational companies were open to working with producers, which, if the purchasing of
GM products was not involved in the project, begs the question of what were Monsanto’s real
motivations for investing money in preserving seeds.
Environmentalists and other groups against the use of transgenic corn earned what could
have been called a symbolic or moral victory in August 2007. With the support of
Environmental Secretary, Martha Delgado, actual cornstalks were planted throughout Mexico
City. As a symbol of the city’s attempts to become “greener,” the city said that it would plant
more trees around the city, along with native milpas (cornfields). Present at the announcement
and applauding the efforts were Mexican celebrities Vanessa Bauche, Demían Bichir and
Manuel Bernal. Also supportive of the initiative were Greenpeace and a relatively new
organization calling itself “Sin maíz no hay país” (“Without corn, there is no country”).174 Not
only does the event show that the government continued to notice the complaints involving corn,
it also showed that the varying sides involved in the tensions related to corn policies could make
peace with small gestures such as the planting of cornstalks.
Only a couple months after the thawing in the tensions concerning corn in Mexico,
campesinos began 2008 with a reminder that their grievances were far from satisfactorily dealt
with. On the same day that corn and beans became freely traded products, according to
stipulations in the NAFTA, thousands of rural groups coordinated demonstrations around the
country and promised to continue to increase the amount of future protests. Again, the
international bridge between El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez was taken over by protestors,
forbidding any trucks carrying shipments of corn and beans. In Cuernavaca, El Barzón and other
groups also staged mass protests. Warnings from rural groups were also declared that further
174 Ariadna
Bermeo,
“Quiere
el
Gobierno
crear
una
ciudad
de
milpas,”
Reforma,
August
6,
2007,
Ciudad
y
Metrópoli
section.
95
protests, including ones outside the U.S. embassy and another in Mexico City’s Zócalo, could be
expected unless efforts were made to amend the clauses in the NAFTA.175 As promised,
thousands of campesinos marched around the capital city on tractors and horses, and cows and
sombreros (typical hats belonging to Mexican farmers) and thousands of other people
participated in coordinated protests around the country.176 Collectively, the two protests in the
same month highlighted to people that the country’s corn controversy was not going away,
especially in the eyes of rural populations.
In a twist of sorts, on the same day of the massive protests in Mexico City and other
locations, other groups of farmers marched in Chihuahua demanding that they be allowed to
cultivate transgenic corn seeds. Led by Armando Villarreal and more than 500 other producers,
the protestors openly said that transgenic corn already had a presence in Mexico, and forbidding
their cultivation left farmers at a disadvantage against neighboring North American producers.
Explaining the burning of a tractor during the protest, Villarreal said that the “countryside is
fuming.”177 While the protest did end peacefully, it again revealed that unlike Greenpeace, some
well-known Mexican artists and other Mexicans, some rural groups are not abhorred with the
idea of GM corn being grown and that the country’s corn problem was quite dynamic.
In relations to the grievances connected to corn in Mexico, the remainder of 2008 was
relatively similar to years past. There were no massive protests, but the complaints and opinions
from varying angles related to corn in Mexico sounded familiar. In an article published in July,
Adriana Alatorre discussed efforts being made by the government protecting native genetic
175 Daniel
Pensamiento,
“Alistan
protesta
contra
TLCAN,”
Reforma,
January
1,
2008,
Nacional
section.
176 Daniel
Rea
and
Silvia
Garduño,
“Siembran
reclamos,”
Reforma,
February
1,
2008,
Nacional
section.
177 Daniel
Rea,
“Se
‘cuela’
grupo
pro
transgénicos,”
Reforma,
February
1,
2008,
Nacional
section.
96
strains, specifically that at least 60 percent of native strains would be registered as intellectual
properties by 2025.178 Later in 2008, Greenpeace continued its efforts to forbid transgenic corn
from further contaminating Mexican corn in a peaceful December demonstration outside of the
presidential mansion in Mexico City.179 Less than a week after the environmentalists’ protest,
Sergio Sarmiento continued his attacks on environmentalists and other against working with
transgenics. Echoing past arguments, Sarmiento said that the country’s unwillingness to at least
try experimenting with modern technological advancements in the countryside was “one of the
principle causes of its poverty.”180
Throughout 2007 and 2008 Mexicans’ arguments involving corn policies had evolved
into a larger polarizing but well-known situation. During both years, there were massive protests
that involved traditional and new players in the arguments concerning corn. Trade unions,
national politicians, transnational companies, and even artists became involved in the affairs.
The highest levels of government were compelled to act to quell some of the protests. This short
but active period also showed how arguments and discussions concerning corn in Mexico began
changing; different groups, such as the CNC, National Confederation of Mexican Corn
Producers, began divisions in their individual stances about corn. Moreover, some citizens, such
as Sarmiento and Canales, made convincing arguments against different protestors, thus
revealing that sympathy does not entirely rest with campesinos and urban consumers, and that
the government is not entirely reviled by the public.
178 Adriana
Alatorre,
“Temen
control
sobre
semillas,”
Reforma,
July
12,
2008,
Nacional
section.
179 Adriana
Alatorre,
“Exigen
restringir
maíz
transgénico,”
Reforma,
December
19,
2008,
Nacional
section.
180 Sergio
Sarmiento,
“Nuestro
maíz,”
Reforma,
December
26,
2008,
Jaque
Mate
section.
97
Conclusions
Studying and analyzing the protests concerning connected to corn and tortilla policies in
Mexico offer significant conclusions about the country’s known corn problem. Chronicling the
protests and demonstrations do not tell corn’s history in modern Mexico. However, examining
the various protests, does explain how complaints involving corn have managed to become part
of larger discussions related to economic policies, environmental matters, arguments over
progress and modernization, politics, culture, and nationalism. Detailing the development of
protests involving corn show the many disputes and arguments have been a process, how varied
the different complaints involving corn and tortilla policies are, how corn is simply not a grain to
Mexicans and, up until 2008, changes were difficult to come by in the struggles related to corn.
The first conclusion that can be drawn from the study of protests concerning corn in
Mexico is that the country’s “corn conflict” was an evolution that almost by chance turned into
today’s problematic corn situation. What started during the early 1990s in the countryside
involving handfuls of unhappy farmers loosely organized by groups, such as El Barzón,
gradually turned into coordinated protests around the country. Environmentalists, urban
consumers, higher-level politicians, trade unions, supporters of GM products, and other players
in what today is a large collection of conflicts with corn policies were not involved in the
situation during the early-1990s. However, as economic policies in the country were newly
enacted, politics changed, a number of contingencies occurred, and different actors found ways
to get involved, the national “corn crisis” evolved. Then, in early 2007, in what was the largest
and most united sign of protest related to corn, the country saw the magnitude of the situation.
And, today, Mexico’s complaints associated with corn policies continue to evolve and become
part of larger discussions in the country.
98
Looking at the different protests also shows how diverse groups with different
motivations and agendas have found some way of gathering around problems related to corn.
For many campesinos, corn was a product that they began protests about because they felt they
were entitled to certain things from the government after subsidies were abolished and
guaranteed prices decreased. Their complaints have today splintered into groups who would like
to be able to plant transgenic corn, other factions who want trade protection for their products,
and some groups who want to protect their country’s historic genetic corn variability.
Environmental groups have a different agenda that essentially involves simply forbidding
agricultural products produced with cutting-edge biotechnology from the country. Urban
residents are united under the banner of high tortilla prices, which they equate with ineffectual
governing and less than desired economic policies. Tortilla prices found ways to become a
political matter, with Andrés Manuel López Obrador and trade unions using the subject of high
prices as fodder to criticize the PAN administration and gain supporters. In addition to these
different groups and their varying agendas, there are also popular figures that have different
attractions to the grievances associated with corn policies, such as Rubén Albarrán and his
support for campesinos, or artists and their political cartoons related to cultural aspects involving
corn. Together, the different groups and their varying agendas have found common ground in
Mexico’s “corn conflict.”
The popular unrest stemming from corn in Mexico also shows how fundamental corn is
to the country’s people. For farmers, corn is far from solely a grain to be harvested, eaten and
marketed. For other groups, such as urban tortilla consumers, environmentalists and popular
artists, corn represents a valued culinary ingredient, piece of their ancient culture and a
fundamental part of their identity as Mexicans. Thus the protests related to corn could be
99
considered defense of a fundamental piece of the country’s historical narrative or reactions to a
“resignification” of corn. Mexicans are dealing with corn becoming integrated into a generalized
agricultural market system and what this could mean the grain’s significance in the country.
Moreover, people are dealing with the changes of significance of criollo corn as the
technological and social terrains in Mexico and the world change.
A final and telling conclusion that can be drawn from studying the protests in Mexico is
that changes have been few and ineffectual. For producers, guaranteed prices and subsidies have
not returned, corn remains a freely traded product, and other neoliberal economic policies started
in the early 1980s have relatively remained in place. Moreover, producers are still not allowed to
plant transgenic corn and, as some of them believe, fairly compete with global producers.
Although GM corn has been confirmed in Mexico and environmental groups continue their
protests, imports of transgenic corn continue to enter the country. Urban consumers received
some relief with the stabilization pact, but, as evidenced only months after early 2007 and in
Chapter 1, prices quickly increased and look to keep increasing to levels not seen in decades.
Also, despite the growth of a more civic society in cities, politicians have offered little more than
sympathy and ineffective responses to urban grievances. In essence, much has been discussed
and argued, but monumental changes have not occurred.
Demonstrations and protests related to corn around the country over the last two decades
have together created an array of complaints from the public. Various protests somehow
involving corn in Mexico collectively tell a story that involves politics, economics, civics,
traditions, the environment, culture and nationalism. The protests show how what started as
complaints from the countryside became part of what today is a national conflict with corn
policies that has involved a number of groups with a variety of agendas and wants. Also, the
100
protests demonstrate that meaningful changes in response to the protests have been tough to
notice and difficult to attain. The persistent history of protests demanding meaningful changes to
resolve Mexico’s many complaints associated with corn also underline how rapidly the grain’s
symbolism and significance to Mexicans is reemerging.
CONCLUSIONS
101
Throughout Mexican history the saying, “Sin maíz, no hay país,” (“There is no country
without corn”) has been regarded as truth in literal and figurative senses. This is because corn’s
place in the country’s narrative has been more than simply being an ingredient for making
tamales or a grain grown for profit. For many Mexicans, corn has been considered a cultural
artifact and a key component to their national identity, which they collectively value. However,
over recent decades, discussions related to corn have changed because of economical and
political dynamics. Different groups, such as discontented urban consumers, concerned farmers
and environmentalists, have been mobilized because of different policies related to corn and have
managed to make discussions concerning the grain to be problematic and even controversial.
The evolution of the changes related to corn was discussed throughout Chapters 1 through 3.
From this evolution, three important conclusions can be made concerning Mexico and corn.
The first and most significant conclusion that can be made is that right now there is
recentralization of corn in Mexico. Mexicans from different backgrounds and with different
grievances have been galvanized to “protect” corn, and have found methods for using corn to
express complaints concerning larger and more abstract topics. In urban areas, citizens managed
to use the topic of high tortilla prices to show discontent with the government and question their
ability and legitimacy to govern. Rural groups, particularly small and medium-sized farmers, are
utilizing the removal of corn subsidies and former entitlements that they used to receive to
express not only discontent with the government, but to show evidence of what neoliberal
economic, and thereby political policies, effect their livelihoods. Environmental groups and
other concerned with protecting Mexico’s corn genetic variety have used what is happening to
corn to gain a political voice against transnational companies and technology. In essence, the
102
Mexican people have been collectively, although not by design, remaking corn important to the
country. While the history of how corn became important to Mexican identity and how its
importance was maintained has been well documented, this thesis demonstrates the unraveling of
these processes and how people, and not a hegemonic political entity, are reinstalling corn’s
centralization.
The fact that the Mexican people have been agents for the recentralization of corn in
Mexico is significant, when compared to what historiography concerning corn and Mexico are
compared to what is happening today. Jeffrey Pilcher made the point that throughout the late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century the government tried a variety of methods to convince
people of the superiority of wheat over corn. Shortly after the Mexican Revolution, however, the
government was compelled to accept the fact that Mexicans were, as Pilcher said, hombres de
maíz, and thereafter corn was an undeniable part of the country’s identity. Moreover, the
government understood that corn’s cultural and nutritional importance to the country could not
be ignored. Thus, controlling the political discourses concerning corn could be used to maintain
or gain legitimacy.
Enrique Ochoa proved that since 1910 the Mexican government, under the control of the
PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional; Institutional Revolutionary Party), found made
providing food security to its constituents a key part of its “hegemonic package.” A key strategy
to providing food security involved manipulating urban food markets, which absolutely included
the price of corn and tortillas, to provide cheap food to its urban supporters. Providing food
security also involved ensuring that countryside farmers received what they felt were fair prices
for their products, such as corn, even if it meant paying more for domestic prices than
international prices. Realizing how important corn was to the Mexican people, the PRI created
103
policies that ensured that they could control and manipulate the political use of corn. And the
PRI’s strategy was successful; they were the ruling party for decades.
The shift that Mexico took after the early-1980s, however, began changes to the political
landscape in the country. More specifically, the shift towards more neoliberal economic policies
began what could be called the beginning of corn’s decentralization in Mexico. Adopting
neoliberalism involved far more than easing corn tariffs and allowing the market to decide food
prices. According to neoliberal policies, a state has to be willing to enact and enforce laissez
faire government policies, which meant that the PRI would have to change its history of policies
of food security. Consequently, this also meant that the PRI gradually surrendered control of the
political discourses concerning corn in the country. Corn was no longer a “protected” and
important political tool. Then, in the early-1990s, when Mexico began removing state sponsored
subsidies and signing agreements to phase out all tariffs on corn imports, corn truly became a
product subject to be part of transnational trade, global prices, and the importation of transgenics.
This process began under the PRI’s reign and has intensified with the election of the more
market-friendly PAN (Partido Acción Nacional; National Action Party). However, as evidenced
throughout the previous chapters, the Mexican people have been taking progressively more
organized and overt actions to remind the government that corn is important to them and seen as
an essential to their national and cultural identity.
The second conclusion stemming from this thesis involves the reaction to Mexican
people trying to recentralize corn. More specifically, the lack of genuine and permanent reaction
on the part of the government is important and telling. Chapter 3 discussed how recently any
meaningful policies to curtail the plight of urban consumers and deal with the other protests
involving corn have been absent. However, this lack of action on the government’s behalf is
104
indicative of how what has been happening to corn in Mexico for some decades. Since the
1980s, Mexico has only entrenched itself further in neoliberal policies, and with the election of a
known laissez faire-leaning party, the further integration into these policies has intensified. In
other words, corn’s centralization in Mexican identity has been undergoing unwanted, in much
of the public’s eyes, change and the process has garnered little to no consequential reform. As
mentioned, corn has simply become a product under neoliberalism, a fact that the Mexican
government has done nothing to alter.
Finally, this thesis demonstrates that the diverse protests related to corn have not been a
unified, united movement. Instead, the variety of protests has been quite scattered and
exceptional. While the protests have revolved around government policies related to corn, any
signs of a larger, mobilized movement to resolve Mexico’s corn problems have not been present.
The different groups protesting one matter related to corn or another have been largely motivated
to only protest their own complaints. With the exception of the January 2007 massive protest in
Mexico City, when urban consumers, rural farmers and environmentalists marched, the protests
have been separate incidents with little relations to other protests. For example, the farmer
protests in Guadalajara were exclusively marching for themselves, not as part of another, such as
anti-transgenics, or larger effort. Nonetheless, the protests involving corn collectively amount to
matters that Mexicans continue to become aware of and that the government will continue to be
compelled to deal with.
Discussions mentioning corn throughout Mexican history have changed over the last
three decades. This is because corn is no longer simply a ubiquitous nutritional ingredient or
nationalistic emblem. Over the course of the last three decades, economic and political
frameworks have compelled people to make policies related to corn sources of discord and have
mobilized thousands of people. While protestors’ complaints have been answered by little
105
change and inaction on the part of the government, various stratified groups from different
sectors with different grievances continue to express discontent. All the while, these protestors –
the public – continue to recentralize corn’s importance to their country’s identity and culture, and
remind people that, particularly in Mexico, Sin maíz, no hay país.
106
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APPENDIX A. WAGES
YEAR
1940
D.F.
MANUFAC
-TURING
WAGES
(Estadísticas
Históricas)
114
NATIONAL
MANUFACTURING
WAGES
(Banco de
México)
AVERAGE
FAMILY
INCOME
(Estadísticas
Históricas)
MEDIAN
HOUSEHOLD
INCOME
(Estadísticas
Históricas)
MEDIAN
HOUSEHOLD
INCOME
(WIDER)
NATIONAL
MANUFACTURING
WAGES (scaled to 1984)
4.067
0.261
6.706
0.431
11.581
0.744
18.126
1.165
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
27.854
1959
1960
28.153
1.809
1961
1962
1963
42.601
1964
1965
39.629
2.546
1966
1967
1968
0.023
1969
0.023
3.742
1970
51.307
3.746
0.024
3.823
1971
0.025
4.073
1972
0.028
4.512
1973
0.031
4.929
1974
69.183
0.038
6.109
1975
110.314
0.046
108.679
1976
161.566
0.057
7.268
1977
179.519
0.075
1978
203.617
0.086
13.748
1979
238.671
0.100
16.009
1980
291.514
0.123
19.632
1981
364.061
0.163
26.016
1982
634.059
0.261
41.678
9.108
231.167
11.930
115
1983
942.143
0.407
918.387
1984
1556.317
0.626
1431.118
1985
2295.176
0.960
153.308
1986
1.681
268.477
1987
3.820
610.204
0.208
100.000
1988
8.087
1989
10.576
1291.653
1990
13.782
2201.351
1991
17.996
2874.429
1992
22.627
1993
26.604
1994
29.505
1995
34.341
1996
41.202
1997
49.390
1998
58.520
1999
69.118
2000
79.888
2001
89.984
2002
96.275
2003
101.870
16271.525
2004
106.641
17033.561
2005
110.696
17681.370
2006
115.501
18448.731
2007
120.253
19207.839
2008
126.445
20196.792
28840.083
3.958
57357.850
7.717
69745.008
9.449
1689.320
3614.101
4249.424
Notes. All wages have been converted to pesos per day.
65.038
4712.815
5485.262
13.064
6581.071
7888.948
20.186
9347.376
11040.090
30.821
12760.327
14373.046
38.241
15377.792
APPENDIX B. TORTILLA PRICES
TORTILLA
PRICES
(Estadísticas
Históricas)
YEAR
116
TORTILLA
PRICES (Banco
de México)
TORTILLA
PRICES INDEX
(1970=100)
1940
0.17
19.835
1941
0.18
19.835
1942
0.2
19.835
1943
0.22
22.066
1944
0.24
29.339
1945
0.24
31.322
1946
0.24
32.727
1947
0.24
33.554
1948
0.24
37.521
1949
0.267
42.810
1950
0.355
45.537
1951
0.379
43.719
1952
0.396
40.331
1953
0.406
39.835
1954
0.454
60.579
1955
0.518
61.983
1956
0.551
62.314
1957
0.529
64.711
1958
0.488
75.289
1959
0.482
76.281
1960
0.733
76.446
1961
0.75
76.033
1962
0.754
76.033
1963
0.783
77.438
1964
0.911
99.091
1965
0.923
99.587
1966
0.925
100.000
1967
0.92
100.000
NATIONAL
MANUFACTURING
WAGES (scaled to 1984)
REAL PRICES
(National tortilla
price/national
manufacturing
wages)
0.261
75.899
0.431
72.695
0.744
61.193
1.165
53.220
1.809
42.260
2.546
39.110
1968
0.92
100.000
3.746
1969
0.937
0.02
100.000
3.742
31.500
1970
1.199
0.02
100.000
3.823
31.500
1971
1.205
0.02
100.000
4.073
21.000
1972
1.21
0.02
100.000
4.512
21.000
1973
1.21
0.03
150.000
4.929
31.500
1974
1.21
0.05
250.000
6.109
39.375
1975
1.21
0.06
300.000
7.268
37.800
1976
1.21
0.07
350.000
9.108
36.750
1977
1.21
0.08
400.000
11.930
36.000
1978
1.231
0.08
400.000
13.748
28.000
1979
1.435
0.1
500.000
16.009
31.500
1980
2.187
0.1
500.000
19.632
26.250
1981
2.559
0.13
650.000
26.016
25.594
1982
2.87
0.18
900.000
41.678
21.808
1983
3.579
0.31
1550.000
65.038
23.817
117
1984
3.579
0.45
2250.000
100.000
22.500
1985
4.177
0.75
3750.000
153.308
24.609
1986
1.68
8400.000
268.477
31.500
1987
3.81
19050.000
610.204
31.418
1988
6.45
32250.000
1291.653
25.114
1989
6.53
32650.000
1689.320
19.442
1990
12.26
61300.000
2201.351
28.025
1991
13.62
68100.000
2874.429
23.835
1992
13.76
68800.000
3614.101
19.153
1993
14.78
73900.000
4249.424
17.503
1994
16.03
80150.000
4712.815
17.111
1995
21.8
109000.000
5485.262
19.997
1996
30.9
154500.000
6581.071
23.625
1997
41.23
206150.000
7888.948
26.296
1998
58.7
293500.000
9347.376
31.597
1999
78.73
393650.000
11040.090
35.880
2000
84.31
421550.000
12760.327
33.243
2001
93.36
466800.000
14373.046
32.683
2002
99.35
496750.000
15377.792
32.508
2003
113.13
565650.000
16271.525
34.982
2004
126.72
633600.000
17033.561
37.431
2005
129.97
649850.000
17681.370
36.983
2006
142.61
713050.000
18448.731
38.894
2007
160.59
802950.000
19207.839
42.067
2008
166.397
831985.000
20196.792
41.453
Notes. Tortilla prices are pesos per kilogram. Wages are pesos per day.